Before the Bunch II: Carol and Her Girls
by FantasyIslander65
Summary: How was life for Carol, Marcia, Jan and Cindy before they connected with the male half of the Brady bunch? Here's their story!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** _When I brought Carol into Mike's story, I decided it was time to start writing hers. As before, thanks to Woemcat for allowing me to use the first names she came up with for Carol's mother, sister, niece, and first husband. And of course, many thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing Mike's story; I hope you'll enjoy Carol's story just as much.

* * *

_**HIS DREAM GIRL**

Carol Tyler was a worrier by nature. She didn't know where she got it from; she just did. Her parents, especially her father, were easygoing and assured, and they'd always been her rocks, her source of support. When something went wrong, she just naturally turned to them.

Now, she reflected, when she started worrying, she'd have Roy to turn to. He was strong and sure and capable, and quite a bit more experienced in life than she was, as he was six years older. He'd been engaged once but it hadn't worked out, and when Carol had first met him he'd been unhappy and lonely. Now, two years later, they were about to get married, and Roy constantly referred to her as his "dream girl", the one he should have met first. Roy had a pretty way with words, and he could make her feel beautiful and special, when she normally considered herself an ordinary-looking little worrywart sandwiched in between her pretty and popular older sister, Mary, and her handsome and equally popular younger brother, Jack.

"All set to change your name, Kitty?" asked Henry Tyler then, poking his head into Carol's bedroom, the one she'd had since she was ten years old and was feeling nostalgic over already.

Carol glanced around and smiled. "Sure, Dad." She decided to overlook Henry's use of the old family nickname, given to her very early in her life because her initials spelled out CAT. "It'll be sad, though, moving out of my comfy room."

"Thought you were looking forward to having your very own home and your very own husband to take care of," put in her sister Mary from behind her. "Stand still, so I can finish putting up your hair."

"I am," Carol said. "Aren't I allowed to miss my old room and everything else? Besides, you were just as sorry to leave your nice big bedroom when you married Roger."

Mary Everhart snorted. "That was only because Jack went and took it over with his endless, infernal model warplanes. Where are we going to put the baby now when we come over to visit?" Mary was six months pregnant; she was four years older than Carol and had been married for a bit more than three years, all of which time she and Roger had spent trying to have a baby. The whole family was very excited about the child; Roger and Mary hadn't settled on a name yet, and for weeks there'd been a lively debate going on, picking up steam with every week the parents-to-be failed to reach a decision.

Jack, two years younger and a college student whose biggest goal in life was to make enough money to be able to travel abroad as often as he liked, stuck his head in the door. "Hey, Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Martin just got here and Roy's right behind them, and Mom wants to know where you are."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," said Henry with an air of weary, affectionate tolerance. "Say, Kitty, want me to send your mother up?"

"That'd be great, thanks, Dad," Carol said, and Henry winked and departed, with Jack behind him.

"Why didn't you tell him to stop using that silly nickname?" Mary asked idly, pinning up some more of Carol's long golden-blonde hair.

"Oh, I don't mind if he uses it," Carol said, shrugging. "I guess he's used it for so long he's forgotten my real name."

"He'll have to remember it starting in a few hours," Mary noted humorously. "You're about to switch last initials, after all. And besides, Kitty strikes me as a child's nickname. You look a lot more like a Carol than a Kitty, at least to me."

Carol grinned. "I think I feel more like a Carol than a Kitty, now that I'm about to become a married woman."

In the mirror she saw Mary's face grow sober. "Carol, are you really sure Roy Martin's the right guy for you? Are you absolutely positive?"

Bewildered, Carol frowned. "Of course I'm sure. Why wouldn't I be? You were absolutely positive about Roger."

"Carol, that was me. This is you. And we may be sisters, but we're two different people, don't forget that," Mary said, a little impatiently. "Look, I don't want to cause any trouble or anything, but I…I just have this really weird feeling about Roy. He's so much older than you are, and he's been around the block more than once, from the look of him. There's something about him that just makes me…" She trailed off, as if searching for the right word, and Carol waited a moment.

When Mary didn't continue, she prodded, "Makes you what?"

Mary compressed her lips and secured the last lock of her sister's hair. "Mmph," she finally mumbled.

"Chicken," Carol said, eyeing her sister reprovingly in the mirror.

Mary eyed her right back. "Cluck, cluck," she said, deadpan.

Carol lowered her chin and let her expression grow stern. "Mary Cathleen Tyler Everhart…"

Mary sighed and shook her head. "I don't know, Carol, it's just that there's something about Roy that kind of rubs me the wrong way somehow. I can't pin it down. He's just…older…"

"Only six years, for heaven's sake. You make it sound like I'm marrying one of Dad's friends," Carol said accusingly, hurt. "I'm not as naïve as I look."

"But you're so innocent," Mary said helplessly. "You…you always wanted to grow up and have babies and take care of a guy, and there's nothing wrong with that…if it's the right guy and he appreciates it. I just think Roy knows he's about to have a life of leisure."

"How do you figure that? He works!" Carol exclaimed.

"And that's all he'll ever do," Mary retorted. "When he gets home at night he'll probably yell, 'Where's supper?' and flop on the couch and put his feet on the table and turn on the ballgame on TV. He'll expect you to have the house clean and his food cooked and his shirts ironed, and at the same time have a party dress on and your hair all done up and your face made up, like Donna Reed and Harriet Nelson."

Carol shot her a look. "I'm not going to be wearing pearls, sister dear."

Mary groaned. "Oh, Carol! I'm just saying…" She sighed and shook her head, slumping a little. "I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. His parents seemed really nice when we met them that time. Maybe Roy just presents a whole different personality from what he's really got." She looked up, pleading. "I just don't want to see my little sister get hurt."

"He won't hurt me," Carol said. "He really wants to make a good life for me."

"Okay," said Mary. "It's your wedding, sis. Well, you're ready, let's get downstairs."

Within the hour, Carol Ann Tyler and Roy Arthur Martin were married in a solemn church ceremony that culminated in a honeymoon trip to Catalina Island. Two months later, Carol learned to her surprise and delight that she was expecting a baby. "So soon?" Roy asked when she told him.

"Yes…it must have happened on our honeymoon," Carol said happily. "The doctor says I'm eight weeks along. Isn't it wonderful?"

Roy shrugged. "I guess," he agreed. "I just thought we were gonna wait a while." He approached her and wrapped his arms around her and smiled down at her. "I was looking forward to lots of time alone with my dream girl, that's all."

"But it's going to be our child," Carol said, staring back at him. "Our son or daughter."

Roy kissed her. "I know. I don't mean to be a downer on things, baby. I guess I just need some time to get used to the idea of being a father." He grinned suddenly. "Imagine that, me a dad. Y'know, it just might be fun, playing baseball with the kid and teaching him the workings of cars."

"It might be a girl," Carol teased.

"Naw, we'll have a boy first. Girls can come later. Yeah…yeah, this just might be a good thing," Roy mused, smiling broadly. "I'm proud of you, baby. Hey, you know, I just might have to stop calling you 'baby' after we have a real one in the house. How 'bout just 'dream girl'?"

"Anything you like, dearest," Carol said softly and melted under his kiss. She could hardly wait to be a mother, and she knew Roy would love their child, boy or girl.


	2. Chapter 2

**AND BABY MAKES THREE**

Not too long after Carol had shared her happy news with her family and Roy's parents, her sister went into labor and delivered a baby girl, who was named Christine Ellen Everhart. The name had been chosen a bare two weeks before the child was born, making everyone in both the Tyler and Everhart families sigh with laughing relief. Chrissy was Henry and Martha's first grandchild, but for Roger's parents she was number eight, as Roger was the youngest of four children.

Having solved the problem of naming Roger and Mary's baby, the Tylers then turned to the conundrum of naming Roy and Carol's. Roy's parents got into the spirit too; Roy was their only child, and they were thrilled that at last he was giving them a grandchild. When even Jack started participating in the game, Roy gave up and began tossing out ideas of his own, although Carol noticed he contributed only boys' names.

Roy's mother noticed it too. "Roy, dear," she said one day when Carol was just about halfway through her pregnancy, "you seem to be forgetting that you and Carol just might have a girl."

"Ma, we're gonna have a boy first," Roy said flatly. "That's the way it should be done."

"Mother Nature may have something to say about that," Mrs. Martin said gently.

Roy shrugged. "I just have a feeling we're having a boy. Now let's see, what about Lawrence Andrew Martin?"

"That makes LAM," Jack pointed out. "Sounds like he's on the run." That set off laughter and the playful debate raged anew, but Carol wondered uneasily what would happen if Roy's wishes weren't fulfilled. She loved him, but he was pretty bullheaded about some things.

She tried brainstorming names with Roy in private, too, but every time she brought up a girl's name he merely countered with one for a boy. It didn't take long for Carol to learn to keep female choices to herself, and she was worried about Roy and about his reaction to the baby when it finally arrived—but some rebellious little piece of her wanted a girl, just to show Roy up.

And that was just what happened when Carol delivered a six-pound, five-ounce baby girl one fine summer day. Roy was at work, of course, so she had some time to herself before he came in to see her and their new daughter. Roy, like his father, was a plumber by trade, but worked independently; he had often said he couldn't stand taking orders from other people. As a result, he and Carol didn't have much money, but he had flyers and posters up all over town, and he was always putting ads in the classifieds, whenever he had some extra cash. He was good at what he did, and was slowly gaining a reputation; but Carol couldn't help wishing at times that he weren't such a lone wolf. They had no insurance, for one thing, and the Martins and Tylers were contributing to the cost of Carol's hospital stay, along with the layette and supplies for the baby. And Carol was planning to breast-feed, to cut down on the expense of bottles and formula.

So she found herself gazing proudly down at her first baby, her new daughter, and quietly applied the name she had finally chosen the previous month. "Welcome to the world, Marcia Suzanne Martin," she murmured to the sleeping infant, and with the lightest of fingertips traced the baby's wispy eyebrows, the slope of her tiny nose, the ridges and valleys of her lips. She was amazed and wonder-filled at the softness of baby Marcia's skin.

She had almost half an hour to marvel over her baby when Henry and Martha came in to visit, eager looks on their faces. "Oh my goodness, there's the little one!" Martha crooned. "Oh, Carol, she's beautiful! Do you have a name for her?"

"Marcia Suzanne," said Carol. "I came up with it last month, but I didn't tell Roy."

"Yeah, Roy," Henry said, harrumphing and hitching his pants up by the belt loops while Martha looked on in amusement. "Wait till he finds out he's got a daughter instead of the son he was so sure about."

"Oh, Dad," said Carol, feeling indulgent toward the whole world in her delight over her baby. "He'll fall right in love with Marcia as soon as he sees her."

"Marcia, huh?" Henry murmured, softening as he leaned over to get a closer look at his second granddaughter. "She's a cutie, that's for sure. But I'm gonna have to learn to keep my wife and my granddaughter straight in my head."

"I sort of wanted to name her for you, Mom, but I wanted her to have her own name too," Carol explained, seeing her mother's flush and smile. "Martha and Marcia sound close, but they're distinct too."

"How sweet, dear," Martha said, reddening even more. "I didn't expect you to do that…"

"Well, I wanted to," Carol insisted. "Dad, don't scare her." Henry was leaning so far over that his nose practically touched the baby's.

"Just trying to see who she looks like, that's all," Henry said, straightening up anyway. "Guess she's a tad small for that yet. Oh, well…so have they got ahold of Roy yet?"

"No, he was out on a job," Carol said. "I guess they'll just keep trying till they can get him. He was going home right after he finished."

Martha frowned. "He wasn't coming here?" She shook her head. "I really don't understand that young man, and to tell you the truth, neither does Jean. She can't quite figure out how she and Samuel managed to bring up a boy so different from the two of them."

"Can happen to anybody, Martha," Henry remarked. "Let's just hope little Marcia there turns out more like Carol than Roy, that's all."

"Roy means well," Carol insisted. "I told you, he'll love Marcia as soon as he sees her."

"I hope so, Kitty," Henry said, softening and gazing at his middle child with a wistful smile. "For your sake, I really hope so. Well, now, let me get ahold of your brother and sister, and let them know about our latest family member."

Roy didn't appear till nearly seven that evening, and it was clear someone had told him about his daughter, for he looked less than thrilled when he came into Carol's room. She'd just finished eating and was holding the sleeping infant in her arms, loath to release her even to a nurse. "So we got a girl," said Roy by way of greeting, casting the baby a token glance.

"Yes, we did, and she's just lovely," Carol said firmly. "Roy, for heaven's sake, you can't have everything your way, especially something you have no control over. Just because our baby's a girl, that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve her father's love."

Roy blinked; Carol almost never stood up to him like that, so that he'd learned to listen and back down when she did. He looked a little more closely at Marcia, then nodded, looking contrite. "You're right, dream girl, you're right," he said. "And heck, she _is_ kinda pretty, isn't she? Well, what the hey…now I'll have two dream girls living with me. My dream girl, and our little dream girl, who's gonna look like her mommy."

"Maybe," said Carol, laughing. "Maybe. Whoever she looks like, to me she'll just be our Marcia."

‡ ‡ ‡

The Tylers were surprised when Carol turned out to be right and Roy did indeed fall in love with his new daughter. He often professed reluctance to go to work whenever he got a plumbing job, telling Carol he couldn't wait to get back home to her and the baby; whenever Carol fed Marcia, he would sit nearby, just watching, his eyes darting between his wife and the baby, his finger occasionally stealing out to trace the softness of little Marcia's hair. By the time she was three months old she had a respectable head of soft, burnished-gold hair, growing in straight and shiny like Carol's, but darker. She had big, round blue eyes and was developing just the hint of a cleft chin, and Carol realized she was taking after her grandmother Jean Martin. When she brought this up one day when all four grandparents were visiting, Jean was delighted, and spent a full fifteen minutes with Marcia in her lap staring up at her, while Jean studied the child's face in the minutest possible detail.

"What a little sweetheart," Jean gushed happily, smiling brightly at Marcia, who continued to stare up at her with naked curiosity all over her small elfin face. "You know, I think I do see that she looks a bit like me. Just look, Sam, that's definitely my chin she has."

"Only not as pronounced, I guess," Sam Martin said, smiling. "Could be the Tyler influence in there."

"It surprises me she doesn't look more like you, Carol," Jean remarked. "You have such pretty features."

"Oh…maybe the next one," Carol said, blushing. "Actually, I'm glad Marcia looks like you. I think you have very classical features."

Jean looked up for the first time and smiled wryly. "That's very kind of you, dear," she said. "They used to tell me in school I looked like Cicero, or some other sharp-faced Roman emperor. 'Classical' makes it sound so much better somehow."

Henry and Martha agreed that Marcia was taking after Jean. "Better she looks like you than me," said Henry with a jovial guffaw that made Sam Martin burst into laughter and Jean and Carol grin resignedly at each other. Martha shook her head.

"Henry," she admonished. "For heaven's sake."

"It's okay, Mom," Carol said, chuckling. "I'm just glad Marcia has four doting grandparents."

"She'll grow up to be a beauty," Martha predicted then. "Someday she'll be a heartbreaker, Carol, just wait and see." She glanced at Jean. "Whatever influences there are on your features, Jean, they came out just right. You can already see how pretty Marcia's going to be one day."

Carol smiled. All was right with her world, and she was the happiest thing on two feet just now. Roy seemed to have forgotten he ever wanted a boy, and the three of them were a joyful little family. Carol foresaw years of happiness and harmony ahead, and let herself daydream.


	3. Chapter 3

**JACK'S PRESCIENCE**

It was about a month before Christmas when Roy announced he'd gone into a partnership. "Guy I knew in school just came back out here," he explained while Carol was changing Marcia's diaper. "We got together over a cup of coffee, and it turns out he's a plumber too. He's been looking for someone to work with, and I said we oughta go into business together."

"I hope it's good for business," Carol said. "It would come in handy for Christmas."

Roy nodded, ticking Marcia's tummy. "Yeah, sure would. Well, you never know, we might get lucky."

Surprisingly enough, Roy did get lucky. His new partner had a better head for advertising than Roy did, and spent some of his own money to take out ads in trade papers and the newspaper. Business began to go up, slowly but surely, and Roy told Carol expansively to be generous with their relatives for the holiday.

So Carol happily took Marcia Christmas shopping, enjoying the attention Marcia got as much as she did the chance to get out of the house for a while. She relished the opportunity to get her family some really nice things for Christmas, and splurged on a few baby toys for Marcia as well.

Of course, Chrissy and Marcia, being less than a year apart and still in their infancy, were the ones who got the most presents on Christmas Day. Carol's favorite gift for Marcia was an adorable little pink jacket trimmed in faux fur; it was a bit big on her, but Sam and Jean insisted she could grow into it and probably wear it next season as well as this one before it became too small for her.

After the holidays, Roy began to suggest they try for another baby. "So soon?" Carol asked in late January, finally driven to wonder what was making Roy so insistent.

"Sure, dream girl, why not? Marcia can have a little brother close to her own age. We're getting flush; we can afford another kid."

"We'd need another bedroom," said Carol. "We're a little cramped in here as it is, with only the one and Marcia sleeping in our room."

"I'm looking into that," Roy said, surprising her. "It's pretty crowded in here, I agree with you. Tell you what, once we find a place with two bedrooms, how 'bout we go for the second baby."

"I was hoping we could get Marcia out of diapers first," Carol said wistfully. "It's nice to have them fairly close together, but changing diapers for two children can be an awful pain. We had friends with twins, and they were always exhausted."

Roy shrugged and said cheerfully, "Heck, maybe we'll have twins too." Carol stared at him, but he just walked off whistling. She frowned and shook her head, wondering what universe Roy was living in, and then frowning. She needed to keep the family together. Marcia needed her all the time, and Roy was their only source of income. If that meant she had to play peacemaker whenever Roy stirred things up, then so be it. She was determined not to make too many waves.

Soon after Marcia's first birthday they finally moved into a two-bedroom apartment. Carol was a little queasy about it; it was shabby and needed some cosmetic repairs. But it was clean, and Roy got permission from the landlord to fix the cracks in the walls and repaint. As it turned out, the plumbing in the whole building was out of whack, and Roy managed to make a deal with the landlord for six months at half the regular rent in return for making repairs. Carol breathed a little easier at that, and found herself thinking, _Good, now I'll be able to have Mom and Dad, Mary and Roger, and Jack over and not feel ashamed of where I live._ She felt terrible for thinking that, yet she couldn't get the thought out of her mind.

When Jack did come over unexpectedly, though, it was before they had gotten around to painting, though at least Roy had fixed the cracks. "Wow, Carol," he said, staring around the room. "Sure is a change from Mom and Dad's, huh?" He caught himself at his sister's stern look and put up his hands. "Sorry, sis. It's just that I can't quite see you in this place. It's a bad part of town, y'know."

"We're here, and we're making the best of it. We get to cut the rent in half for six months in exchange for Roy's fixing the plumbing in the whole building. And there are some lovely people here," Carol added, her voice brightening. "Katy downstairs has a little girl just a few weeks younger than Marcia, and we've become good friends."

Jack nodded dubiously, looking around again. "If you say so."

"We're going to paint in here," Carol said defensively. "It'll look much better then. Jack, for heaven's sake, please, don't tell Mom and Dad. We'll have them over when we've painted, but till then, don't say anything. Don't tell Mary and Roger either."

Jack stared at her. "Carol, you gotta be kidding. Why not put it in plain English—this place is a dump!"

"It's all Roy can afford!" Carol snapped, upset. "I can't work, I have to be here for Marcia. And it'd upset Roy anyway, if I looked for a job. Who'd take care of Marcia?"

"Your friend Katy downstairs," Jack retorted. "Or Mom and Dad—you know they'd jump at the chance to have their granddaughter around all the time."

"We're not going to mooch off Mom and Dad," Carol said stubbornly. "Come on, Jack, be reasonable. We have to have enough money to feed ourselves and pay the other bills after the rent. You know that."

"Yeah, but what happens when those six months are up and Roy's finished the plumbing job? That'll be that much less cash you have to work with. I hope Roy knows what the phrase 'savings account' means."

"There's no need for sarcasm," Carol barked and turned away to hide the forming tears. Of course, it didn't work; this was her brother, after all, and he knew her too well.

"Aw, man, Carol, I'm sorry," Jack said through a sigh, coming over and laying a hand on her shoulder. "It's just…well, I just want better for my sister and my niece. And the best thing you can do is bank that extra money. Just act like you're paying the full going rate on the rent, except that half of that money's going into savings instead of to the landlord for the next six months. You'll be used to dealing with the money that's available when the rent really does go back to the full rate, and you won't get sticker shock over the missing cash. And the bonus is, you'll have money in the bank for emergencies."

Carol had been watching him as he spoke, more and more impressed. Now she shook her head. "That's such good advice! You haven't even gotten your degree yet and already you're on your way to becoming a frugal millionaire."

Jack laughed. "Don't forget, I want to have plenty of money to travel. That's the only reason I'm taking advantage of financial advice, and I figure since Roy negotiated this little break with your landlord, you should take advantage too. You'll be happier and have more peace of mind."

"I'll tell Roy right away," Carol said, nodding.

"No, don't," Jack said, startling her. "Just do it yourself, Carol."

She peered at him askance. "Why do you say that?"

Jack frowned, looking uncomfortable. "I'm…just not too sanguine about Roy's head for money. I mean, you did tell us it was his partner who was responsible for the upswing in his business, right?" She nodded, bewildered, and he made a _there you go_ face. "I know you're gonna tell me Roy's responsible enough to know that you need money to pay bills and get food and keep Marcia in clothes and like that. But you know he has a way of dreaming big without quite following through. Don't look at me that way, Carol, I overheard his own father saying that to Dad once. Your name's on the accounts, isn't it? My suggestion is to open the savings account in your name only. You can tell Roy you're doing it, but don't tell him that, or next thing you know you'll go to check the balance one day and find out there's five cents in there." He leaned forward beseechingly. "Think of it this way—Roy still doesn't have insurance for himself, let alone you and Marcia. This is your way of keeping something for Marcia, at least, if not for yourself."

Carol thought it over and knew, deep inside, that it made sound sense. She didn't like to admit that Roy could be a free spender, but it was only prudent to face the fact. It salved her conscience to tell herself she was doing it for her daughter. "Okay, Jack," she said finally, "that's what I'll do."

"Atta girl, sis," Jack said, looking relieved. "Now I feel a little better. Hey, I gotta get going, just wanted to stop by and say hi. Hope Marcia's awake next time I drop in."

"Me too," said Carol, relaxing. "She just loves playing with her Uncle Jack."

Jack grinned. "I'll look forward to it. See ya, Carol, take care now." Carol watched him go, suddenly glad her little brother was looking out for her. Maybe his attitude was a little strong, but when all was said and done, Jack loved her, and he certainly was crazy about Marcia. She went to get her purse, found a ten-dollar bill inside, and decided to open that savings account with this money, right away. She couldn't even wait for Marcia to wake up from her nap; the urge was that strong. She simply lifted the sleeping toddler to her shoulder and left the apartment, carrying her all the way to the bank six blocks down the street. It was for Marcia's future, and she would have killed to protect her little girl; nothing was too much to ask.


	4. Chapter 4

**WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH ROY?**

To Carol's surprise, it was easy to hide the extra money from Roy. He was being incredibly sweet and generous toward her, telling her early on to use the money they would have spent on rent to buy herself something pretty, or get some toys for Marcia, whatever. Sometimes Carol was tempted, but her deep-seated streak of common sense always won out, and she quietly banked the money.

The landlord was so pleased with Roy's work when the six months were up that he recommended Roy and his partner to other property owners he knew, and their income began to inch up. Roy always handed Carol a hundred dollars when he got paid and told her, as ever, to spend it on herself or Marcia. Carol simply added the cash to her little nest egg. It made her feel good knowing she had something entirely her own, and she was comforted by the knowledge that if anything untoward took place, she would have a little cushion for herself and Marcia.

Then, about a month after Marcia's second birthday, Carol began having pregnancy symptoms. Roy was overjoyed. "We're gonna get a boy this time, dream girl, aren't we?" he exulted happily.

"It might be another girl," Carol warned him.

"Oh, come on! Look at all the others who have boys. There're people out there who have nothing _but_ boys. Marcia'll have a ball helping you take care of all her little brothers. I can just see it now." Roy was beaming, and Carol felt helpless. What was the story with his obsession with having a son? She wouldn't mind having a boy, but she wished he would be as welcoming of the prospect of a second daughter.

Roy reached over and patted her arm, interrupting her troubled thoughts. "Carol, babe, it's gonna be okay. Go ahead and go to the doctor tomorrow, and find out if you really are pregnant. And if you are, we'll celebrate. Right now, how 'bout some supper? My stomach's growling."

Marcia toddled into the kitchen as Carol began preparing the evening meal, and Roy swung the little girl into his lap. "Hiya, Marcia, kiddo, guess what…you might be getting a little brother soon! Your mom's gonna see the doctor tomorrow, and if he says there's a baby, well, we're all gonna celebrate your future little brother. Hey, Carol, whaddaya think…Roy Arthur Martin, Junior. Sounds great, huh?"

"Sure," Carol murmured weakly, unwilling to argue with him. He'd been in a wonderful mood ever since they'd moved into this apartment. It had been as close as she'd ever been to paradise. Roy had become a loving husband and a devoted father; every evening when he came home, he'd play with Marcia till supper was ready, so that Carol could work uninterrupted. He seemed really happy; he always looked so proud to be able to hand Carol five twenty-dollar bills every payday. Everything was peachy, as her friends Katie and Ellie would say.

She almost wished she hadn't gotten pregnant. Roy had been stiff with disappointment for a day or two after Marcia was born; and though he had eventually warmed up to the little girl, Carol wasn't sure he'd be so amenable this time if they had a girl. _For my sake and for Roy's, please be a boy,_ Carol thought, and then frowned at herself. How wishy-washy could she be? Roy was just going to have to live with what they got. It wasn't as if they could control whether their babies were boys or girls.

But the issue kept bothering her, and finally, about a month after her pregnancy had been confirmed, she called both her mother and Roy's, inviting them to visit for the afternoon. They both accepted, and within an hour Carol was at the table with Jean on one side and Martha on the other, and Marcia sitting in her high chair, clearly delighted to be in on this grown-up tea party.

Carol had baked a Black Forest torte for the occasion, a recipe she had received some birthdays back from her mother's jet-setting, slightly eccentric, perpetually single, but beloved younger sister. Aunt Jenny had informed her that it had come from a chef whose Bavarian Black Forest roots went back for centuries, just like his secret recipe that she was now sharing with her niece. Carol had only half believed the story till she'd gotten another package from Jenny that same Christmas. Jenny had sent a photograph of herself with King George VI of England; and while Carol knew Jenny was good with cameras (among countless other things), she also knew that Jenny would never stoop so low as to have photographs retouched just to make a splashy impression. After that, Carol found herself envying her globetrotting aunt, and had always looked forward to her infrequent visits.

"That's Jenny's cake, isn't it," Martha chuckled as soon as Carol set it out. "Oh, Jean, just wait till you taste it. Carol always does such a lovely job baking things, and that recipe is very special."

"Who's Jenny, if you'll pardon the question?" Jean inquired.

"My little sister," said Martha with a fond smile. "There's not a mean bone in that girl's body, but gracious, I don't think there's a more unconventional female alive. She's never been married…little wonder, poor thing, she sometimes looked like she got beaten with an ugly stick." Martha sighed. "Or at least, that was how it was for her when she was in high school. Land sakes, she used to be the shyest, mousiest thing you ever saw. And then she was invited on a trip to France with her best friend at the time, and the travel bug bit her so hard I swear you can still see teeth marks on that wandering foot of hers. She came right out of herself. It's like that trip changed her completely. She came home spouting French almost like a native and announcing that she was going to get a job that would let her travel everywhere."

"My goodness," Jean said, blinking, but looking impressed. "Go on, Martha, please."

"Yeah, Mom, please," Carol added. She'd never heard the story of how her aunt had turned into the wonderful, exciting lady she was now.

"Well, Jenny managed to get herself hired on as personal maid to some impossibly rich old recluse. Somehow she charmed the living daylights out of the old lady, and she always called home each week brimming with stories of all the stories she'd heard. Seems the recluse had been quite a daring jetsetter in her own day, and Jenny was absolutely hooked by all the tales of the places she'd been and the things she'd done.

"Eventually Jenny's employer up and died—I think she was somewhere around ninety-five—and lo and behold, she had left Jenny her entire estate. Everything. We thought there was some mistake, but the old woman had been the last of her family and had nobody left. Whatever relatives she may have had were apparently so distant they weren't aware of their kinship with her. We were always waiting for some stranger to swoop in and contest the will, but it never happened, and to this day Jenny's living it up. Now, mind you, she's been very generous with that fortune. She paid off Mom and Dad's house for them, and they're living there scot-free and not a penny of debt. When Henry and I got transferred to California, she gave us half the purchase price of our house as a gift and told us not to bother paying it back. Henry was able to pay off the mortgage in just fifteen years. Jenny regularly sends exotic gifts to the kids, and I swear she's infected Jack with her wanderlust, since he wants to get a job that'll allow him to travel."

Jean shook her head in wonder. "It sounds like your sister's an incredibly lucky lady," she remarked, then took a bite of her torte finally. "Oh my. Carol, dear, this is simply divine."

"Thanks to Aunt Jenny's authentic recipe straight from the Black Forest," said Carol proudly. She cut a small square for Marcia and set it in front of her, watching while her two-year-old daughter began to pick the cake apart with small hands. All three women laughed when Marcia took her first bite and closed her huge blue eyes in ecstasy, moaning happily, "Mmmmmmmmm!"

"She knows what she likes," Jean said, chuckling. "So how're you feeling these days, Carol?"

For a couple of minutes they discussed the physical drawbacks of Carol's pregnancy; then Carol took a deep breath and looked at Jean. "Jean…could you tell me something, if I'm not being too intrusive?"

"Of course, dear, ask anything you like," Jean said encouragingly.

Carol sat staring at her cake, trying to think of a non-offensive way to ask. But her pregnancy was working on her, and the hormones had their way. Plaintively she asked, "Why doesn't Roy like girls?"

Jean blinked in confusion, and Martha stared at her daughter. "Come again?" Jean asked blankly.

"Remember when Marcia was born, and he was disappointed she was a girl? Now that I'm pregnant again, he's crowing about the little brother he's convinced Marcia will get. He's so certain it's going to be a boy, he won't even listen if I try to suggest we might have another girl. Now he warmed up to Marcia after she was born, but I'm afraid he was only making allowances. He acted like this when I was expecting Marcia, but it's worse this time. Why is he so convinced he's going to have a son?"

"Does it seem that way to you, dear?" Martha asked gently.

"It doesn't _seem_ like anything, Mom. If you and Jean'll stay for dinner—and please say you will, I'll have Dad and Sam come over too—you'll see what I mean." Carol's eyes filled with tears at last.

"That might not be necessary, dear," Jean said then, her voice slow and regretful. Martha and Carol both looked at her, and she brought her teacup to her mouth and sat with it hovering just out of reach of her lips, as if using it for a shield. "You're right about Roy's attitude, I'm sorry to say. Sam was like that when I was expecting Roy. He wouldn't hear of the baby being a girl—said the Martin men father sons. It wasn't my place to say anything. Women just didn't speak up in those days. But I was so torn. Part of me wanted a girl just to make him eat his words, and part of me wanted a boy so Sam would be proud of me. When Roy was born, Sam just busted his buttons. He lavished everything on me and the baby. I was never able to have another one, as it turned out, so I was doubly glad Roy was a boy, for Sam's sake." She looked up and shook her head, her eyes still faraway. "Once, just once, I asked Sam what he would have done if we'd had a girl, and he said it never would have happened, it was unthinkable, and I should be ashamed of myself for wishing Roy had been a girl. I never brought it up again after that."

"Good heavens," Martha murmured. "What a shame, Jean."

"That's why I was so thrilled when Marcia was born. And Sam mellowed out a bit in his old age, you see. I suppose he figured he had his boy, now whatever he got for grandkids was fine with him. Unfortunately, he seems to have passed his original attitude down to Roy." Jean put down her teacup without ever having drunk from it, reached over and clasped Carol's wrist. "I'm so sorry, dear. I hope he isn't mistreating poor little Marcia."

"No, no, not at all," Carol said hastily, and Jean smiled, looking so vastly relieved that Carol was glad she could tell her mother-in-law the truth. "Oh no, he's a very loving daddy toward Marcia. He plays with her every night when he gets home, so she won't get underfoot and maybe get hurt while I'm making dinner for us. He gives me money every payday and tells me I should buy something adorable for Marcia or some nice piece of jewelry for myself. He's loving and attentive, and it's been wonderful with him. It's only…he has this…this hangup about having a boy, and I'm afraid of what he'll do if this one's a girl."

Jean nodded soberly; Martha sat in silence, looking troubled. "If that happens and Roy's hostile toward your new little one, let us know, and we'll straighten him out. Roy needs to know that he can't dictate whether he gets sons or daughters, and that he'd better accept and love any and every baby he fathers."

Carol nodded and reached over with her other hand to squeeze Jean's. "I will, Jean, and thank you. I'm so glad I talked to you. I feel much better now."

Martha brightened at that. "Good, dear, that's wonderful to hear. We'll certainly stay for supper if you still want us to. We haven't spent enough time with our little granddaughter lately."

Carol grinned. "That's terrific, Mom, I'd love to have you both stay. Let me call Dad and Sam, and let them know they're invited too." She rose and headed for the phone, her heart much lighter. Surely Roy was smart enough to see the wisdom of his parents' words…


	5. Chapter 5

**VERY UNLIKELY ALLIES**

Carol's friend Ellie lived on the first floor; she was about Carol's age but had never been married and had no prospects. When Katie and her family moved out of the building about halfway through Carol's pregnancy, Ellie became her only confidante, which could be wearying at times. Ellie was a champion talker, and Carol learned to do embroidery or cross-stitch while Ellie was visiting, just to keep her hands busy and not have to focus solely on Ellie.

But Ellie was a genuinely nice person and Carol liked her; she sensed Ellie was a little lonely, and didn't really mind providing her friendship and an ear for her to pour out her thoughts into. Ellie enjoyed playing with Marcia, too, keeping the little girl occupied. Marcia was a very feminine child already, and loved playing hostess at tea parties for her dolls, dressing up in an old hat Martha had given her and wearing a long string of costume-jewelry pearls, like a little society matron. Ellie was often a guest at these parties.

One day when Carol was about six months pregnant, Ellie appeared at the door with a long white length of cloth in one hand. "Carol, this is for you," she said immediately when she came in. "I was going through some things and I realized I'd had this for ages. I thought maybe it'd fit you." She shook it out, and Carol stared in surprise; it was a very large white dress with a long skirt, quite plain and unadorned. "It's old, but it should be perfect for hanging around the house in, especially as you keep moving along with that little one there." She peered at Carol's midsection a bit critically. "You're carrying big, aren't you? When you carry big, it means a boy. Roy should be very proud."

Carol winced nervously. Ellie knew all about Roy's certainty that the child she was carrying was a boy, and she'd been feeding Carol a string of old wives' tales clearly designed to put her at ease. "Oh, Ellie, that means no such thing."

"Sure it does. You didn't carry that big with Marcia, did you?" Ellie inquired, and blundered along without waiting for Carol's reply. "Of course not. Boys carry bigger than girls, that's all. My mother certainly did. Every time she had a big belly, I got another brother, and every time it was a little one, out popped a little sister. Worked every time, Carol, I promise you. You'll see." Still talking, she pushed her Coke-bottle-lensed glasses up her long thin nose, a frequent occurrence, and pressed the dress into Carol's reluctant hands, moving into the living room and making herself right at home on the sofa.

Carol wasn't sure she was in the mood for Ellie at this particular moment. Ellie talked about everything—her huge family of ten younger siblings back at home with the mother whose carriage apparently indicated gender; the size of Carol's abdomen; sales and shopping; bargains she'd discovered at stores where Carol never shopped—and she discussed the same subjects repeatedly and often. Carol wanted to be tolerant, but she couldn't help remembering Katie's comment just before she'd left that she was frankly relieved to be moving, so that she'd be "out of range of Ellie's mouth. Don't get me wrong, Carol, I like her, but I've never known anyone who liked the sound of her own voice more than Ellie. Good luck. If you need a break, let me know. I'll call when we're settled and give you our new number."

Carol was still waiting for that call, and today she especially wished for it. It was sunny, and she had been about to suggest to Marcia that they take a walk together to the nearest park where Marcia could burn off some energy running around and perhaps riding on the kiddie merry-go-round there. Now she'd have to muster up whatever patience she could find. Quietly sighing, she settled onto the sofa, laid the dress aside and took up her latest cross-stitch project. Ellie prattled on and on, and Carol let her, weary enough today to only half listen.

Then, totally unexpectedly, Roy walked in the door. "Hey, Carol, babe, I thought—" He stopped short and stared in surprise at Ellie, who had for once snapped her mouth shut and was peering at him as if he'd just fallen out of a flying saucer. "Oh, didn't know you had company."

Carol smiled weakly. "Ellie just dropped in for a bit," she said.

"Oh, yeah, hi there, Ellie," said Roy without interest. "Anyway…I got some time off, Carol…"

"Time off?" Carol repeated uneasily. Roy's last few plumbing jobs had turned out to pay less than he'd expected, and Carol had begun to worry. It wasn't her nest egg that bothered her; there was a nice amount in that. But if Roy wasn't working, or was working much less, they might have to dip into that to keep up with their bills and put food on the table.

Roy noticed her mood and sighed heavily. "Yeah, well, Hal said only one guy was needed on this current job, and there's nothing coming in after that…so he took it. Just thought I'd hang out with you and Marcia and our son-in-waiting there."

"That sounds like fun," Ellie said hopefully.

Roy turned to her, startled. "Yeah, I got some plans. We, uh, we're gonna take a little drive. Carol and Marcia've been cooped up in here awhile and they need some fresh air and sunshine. So, uh, look, we'll see ya around, huh?"

Carol saw the naked longing on Ellie's face and knew Ellie was hoping to be invited along. She didn't want to be rude, but on the other hand, she did think she and Roy and Marcia needed to be a family on an outing, just the three of them. "Listen, Ellie," she said, "I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Maybe we can find a, uh…oh, a nice sale somewhere. You could comb the papers and let me know which ones look good."

Ellie appeared to be thinking this over, but then Roy got impatient. "We really gotta go. No offense, lady, but I just want to spend time with my wife and my kid. So if you don't mind…"

"Roy," Carol protested, wide-eyed.

Ellie cleared her throat. "I see," she said stiffly to Roy. "Well, then, all right, Carol, I'll wait to hear from you tomorrow." She turned and marched out of the apartment.

"Good," said Roy. "Come on, let's get outta here before she changes her mind and comes back. Isn't she that broad that spends all her time flapping her yap? I'm surprised your ears haven't fallen off yet."

Carol smiled weakly. "She's nice, just lonely, that's all." She tried to change the subject. "Where are we going? It sounds like you have something in mind."

"Oh, just thought we'd take a drive around. What in heck do you see in that Ellie?" Roy muttered while Carol went to get Marcia ready to go. "She talks her head off, she's plainer than Jane and she doesn't get the hint to leave when you give it to her. Doesn't she talk about anything besides shopping and how many brothers and sisters she's got?"

Carol scowled, standing in Marcia's doorway. "Roy, for heaven's sake. Ellie's lonely and she needs a friend, and that's all there is to it. And she does talk about things besides shopping and her family. She thinks just because I'm carrying big, I'm going to have that blasted boy you're so obsessed about." With that she whipped around and stalked into Marcia's room. "Come on, Marcia honey, Daddy's taking us on a drive. We're going to go outside for a while!"

"Take my dolly," Marcia said, displaying her favorite baby doll at Carol.

"Of course, honey," Carol said, managing a smile. "Let's get your shoes on, okay?"

She was working Marcia's shoes on her feet when Roy appeared in the doorway. "What was that all about?" he asked, looking more bewildered than anything else. "What'd you say she says about the baby?"

"You heard me," said Carol tightly.

Roy thought it over for a few seconds and then grinned. "Well, I guess that Ellie knows her stuff after all." He meandered inside and studied Carol's stomach while she worked Marcia's other shoe on. "Hey, yeah, you _are_ carrying kinda big, aren'tcha, babe? I've heard that too, about big carriers having boys." He reached around Marcia and patted Carol's gut. "Hi in there, Roy Junior, we're all just waiting for you to come on out and join the family!"

Carol swallowed back the indignant protest about the old wives' tale and just tied Marcia's shoe. She was so tired of arguing. Today she'd been in just about the right mood to do it, and she might have, if it weren't for their daughter. Marcia was a sensitive little girl, and Carol didn't want to frighten her.

They calmed down some on the drive, especially with Marcia's chattering, which was intelligible only part of the time but which made them laugh. Carol felt the baby move within her and smoothed her blouse over her midsection. _I don't care if you're a boy or a girl,_ she thought contentedly, calmed by the drive and refreshed by the breeze blowing through the open windows. _You'll be welcome, no matter what._

When they got back, Marcia had fallen asleep and Carol carried her in, only to stop in surprise when she saw Ellie standing in the hallway going through her mail. Roy came in behind her and paused, then unexpectedly said, "Hiya, Ellie."

Ellie looked up, then grew visibly wary at sight of Roy. "Hello," she said. "Hi, Carol."

Roy cleared his throat, shoved his hands into his pants pockets and began to rock self-consciously back and forth on his heels and toes. "Say, uh, Ellie, listen…Carol said…well, I was just kinda wondering. You really think Carol's carrying big?"

Ellie's mouth dropped open, but for once nothing came out. "Oh, Roy," Carol groaned.

But then Ellie recovered, brightening considerably. "Oh my gosh, yes!" she exclaimed and shoved her glasses back up. "My mother always carried big when she was having a boy, and small when she had a girl. We could always tell what the baby was going to be before it ever got here. Very reliable."

"No kidding," said Roy, intrigued. "That's funny, Carol wasn't too big when she was pregnant with Marcia. I guess that just goes to prove I'm right, huh? Say, whaddaya think about the name Roy Arthur Martin, Junior?" And with that, Roy and Ellie were off and running at the mouth.

Carol rolled her eyes and headed for the temperamental elevator, with Marcia sleeping on her shoulder. Was she really going to have to endure three more months of this foolishness? She frowned and thought it over as the elevator ascended with its usual creaking noises, and by the time she reached their apartment door she had just enough doubt to make a decision. Once inside, she settled Marcia into her crib for her afternoon nap, then picked up the phone and called her doctor.

The doctor laughed when Carol posed her question. "That's an old wives' tale, Mrs. Martin," he assured her. "Every woman is different and each one will carry her child in a different way. And even the same woman will find differences in her own pregnancies, if she has more than one child as you're doing. The size of your belly is no more reliable an indicator of gender than aching old bones are of approaching rain."

Carol nodded to herself, but she couldn't help wondering, and gave in to temptation. "I thought so, doctor, but I have this friend…she's the oldest of eleven kids. She claims that every time her mother carried big, she had a boy, and every time she carried small, it was a girl. She insists it worked each and every time."

"That could have been true," the doctor said, "but keep in mind that it's applicable only to your friend's mother and nobody else. As I said, every woman is different, and multiple pregnancies in the same woman will be different too. Don't let those ridiculous superstitions fool you, Mrs. Martin. Any other questions I can help you with?"

"No, I think you've taken care of everything," Carol replied, grinning. "Thank you so much, doctor." She hung up and stood there laughing to herself. Let Roy and Ellie think what they wanted to think. Maybe they'd keep each other occupied, and out of her hair, till the baby was born.


	6. Chapter 6

**MOMENT OF RECKONING**

By the time Carol's due date came around, she was so ungainly that Roy had begun proclaiming that she must be carrying twins—both boys, of course. Two days before, he invited his parents and Carol's whole family over for a celebratory dinner; they didn't know why he had suggested it till they got there and saw Carol cooking while Roy sat at the table with a mug of coffee and that day's newspaper.

"Anything interesting in there, son?" Sam inquired, joining him at the table along with Henry, Jack, and Roger, Mary's husband. Mary had three-year-old Christine by the hand and was clearly pregnant, though she wasn't due for another four months.

"A big birth announcement pretty soon," Roy said with a huge grin. "Can't wait."

"Oh, that's right," said Martha, immediately pitching in to give Carol a hand with the cooking, "you're just about due, honey, aren't you? My word, you shouldn't have tried to do all this by yourself."

"You shouldn't be doing it at all," said Jean, nodding and stepping in to lend whatever hand she could. "Let us take over from here, Carol."

"Anything Chrissy and I can do?" Mary offered as Carol stepped back from the stove with relief.

"Just sit and talk to me," Carol said, gesturing toward the living room. Jean and Martha had everything well in hand, so she was glad to retreat to the sofa and have a rest. Marcia came out of her room and joined her cousin, and the two little girls promptly started up a tea party in the middle of the living room.

Mary glanced into the kitchen where the men were still chatting around the table and the older women had their own conversation going over the stove. "That Roy," she muttered. "Sitting there relaxing while you're over there doing all the work—and he isn't the pregnant one. Little sister, I hate to say this, but you've married a true male chauvinist pig."

Carol blinked at her. "Male what pig?"

"Chauvinist," Mary said and laughed. "Oh, poor Carol, you're so cloistered in here, you're falling behind the times, and Roy's just letting you slip. Doesn't that man do anything around this place?"

"Mary, he works," Carol protested. "He brings in the only income we have. He works, and I take care of the house and Marcia."

Mary rolled her eyes. "Carol Ann Tyler Martin, you are _nine months pregnant!_ You can barely stand up without wheezing, I can see it! You're more swaybacked than a forty-year-old nag. And look at you, you're all red and sweaty from standing over all those pots. And what's _he_ doing? Sitting there enjoying a cup of coffee—which you probably made for him—and reading the blasted newspaper! Carol, that's just plain not fair! Doesn't he realize that you can't do all the things you usually do when you aren't out to here with a kid in your gut?"

Carol compressed her lips; she knew on some level that Mary was right, but she still loved Roy enough to come to his defense. "He's very proud of me, Mary, he doesn't hit me or Marcia. He always appreciates what I do for him."

"But he doesn't lift a fingertip to help you out, not even when you're ready to bust wide open. Fine, he works to bring in the money you live on, but around the house he's obviously just plain lazy."

Carol breathed in the savory-sweet aroma of cloves from the ham she'd put in the oven; it seemed to soothe her enough to ask her sister calmly, "How much does Roger do around your house?"

Mary hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "Roger works too, but he goes out every day to his office and puts in very long hours. He's even been doing overtime and a few Saturdays on top of that. He doesn't have much chance to do anything. But at least when he's home, he puts his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper instead of strewing them all over the floor."

"Roy doesn't do that," Carol said, scowling.

Mary raised her hands. "Okay, okay. But look, sis, Roger knows that when I get really big with this baby, I'm going to need his help, around the house and with Chrissy. And he's perfectly willing to give that help wherever he can. Mom's helping out a little too, and she said she wished you'd break down and ask for it too, because she's really worried about you, especially as big as you are."

"Roy thinks I have twins in here. Maybe he's right," Carol mumbled, smoothing the fabric of her huge maternity smock over the hillock her stomach had become. She had even outgrown Ellie's old white dress not too long after passing the eight-month mark.

"Twin boys, right?" Mary prompted.

Carol looked up sharply, but something in her sister's eyes broke down her defensive wall, and she nodded in defeat. "Mary, I don't know what to do. Believe me, I'd be perfectly happy if I have a boy, or even if it's two boys. But I'm also perfectly happy if we have another girl, and that's where Roy and I part ways. He won't even consider that it might not be a boy. Jean said he gets his attitude from Sam, and she knows it's not right. She even said that if Roy started up with it in front of them, she'd set him straight in a hurry. But I've been wondering, ever since she told me, if Sam still feels that way."

"Like father, like son," Mary said, shooting another glance toward the kitchen. "Well, what's Roy's attitude toward Marcia?"

Carol told her, still smoothing her abdomen. "Trouble is, he's so certain Marcia's going to have a brother that I'm afraid if it's a girl, he'll just…" She groped for a word, then limply flapped a hand.

"Disown her?" Mary said.

Carol shrugged and tried to laugh. "I hope not. But I…he might be hostile, anyway."

Jack came into the room just then and surveyed Chrissy and Marcia's tea party. "Maybe we should just have the kids eat in here, huh? After all, they've already got a table and place settings." Mary and Carol both laughed, and their brother meandered into the room and grinned. "Wow, Carol, you're gigantic."

"Thanks loads, Jack," Carol said dryly, but feeling good-natured in her relief at getting off the topic of Roy.

Jack snickered. "Hey, it wasn't supposed to be an insult, just an observation. Oh." He wedged himself onto the sofa between his older sisters and looked intently at Carol. "I wanted to ask you, did you set up that savings account I advised you about last year?"

Carol nodded. "It's pretty healthy, and Roy doesn't even know it exists."

"Good," said Jack, looking relieved. "Makes me feel a lot better. Roy strikes me as…uh, well, let's say unpredictable. Sheesh, you should've heard him in there a few minutes ago. Bragging left and right about how you're probably having twins 'cause you're so huge, and then carrying on about how he heard from somebody named Ellie that since you're carrying big, it's definitely gonna be a boy. Who's Ellie?"

"A friend of mine, lives on the first floor," Carol said and chuckled. "I don't put stock in that superstition. I checked with my doctor and he assured me it's just an old wives' tale."

"Oh, okay," said Jack, nodding thoughtfully. "That's something I didn't know. But sounds to me like Roy believes it completely. He's obsessed, isn't he?"

"Utterly," said Mary dryly.

Jack peered at her over his shoulder. "So I hear. Dad thinks it's funny and Mr. Martin's in there just busting away. Thinks Roy's the proudest papa in the world, and I think so too."

Tentatively Carol asked, "Does Sam think I'm having a boy too, the way Roy does?"

"He didn't say," Jack mused. "Funny, though, Mrs. Martin looked like she might haul off and slug somebody any minute. Wonder what the story is."

Martha Tyler looked in on them then. "Come on in, folks, we're ready to eat," she said.

Mary, Carol and Jack got up—Carol with substantial assistance from her brother—and brought Chrissy and Marcia into the kitchen with them so the whole extended family could eat together. Halfway across the living room Carol was suddenly stricken with a sharp pain that began in her lower back and circled rapidly around to the front, gathering and concentrating in her abdomen. "Oh!" she shrieked, as surprised as she was pained.

There was a loud clattering of chair legs in the kitchen and in three seconds, Carol had seven very anxious adults and two startled little girls staring wide-eyed at her. "Hey, Kitty, you okay?" Henry asked.

Carol found herself panting. "I think I may be in labor," she said.

"All riiiiiight!" Roy exploded jubilantly, beaming. "Here comes my boy! Maybe two of 'em!" He knocked on Carol's stomach. "Hiya, Roy Junior! We're all waiting for ya!"

Then, pointedly, Jean Martin demanded of her son, "Suppose it's a girl?"

Roy stared at her as though she'd suggested Carol might produce a jackal. "Huh? Naw, this time it's a boy, Mom. We already have a girl and one's plenty. Now we're having boys. Right, babe?" He poked his index finger into Carol's gut, just as a new pain began to spiral inside her.

It made her snap. "That's what you think, Roy Arthur Martin! If there's a girl in here and you turn your back on her, I promise I'll never forgive you!" She twisted aside and wrapped her arms around her abdomen, moaning.

"Good grief," said Roger Everhart suddenly, breaking the stunned silence, "why are we all standing around here? Shouldn't we be getting Carol to the hospital?"

"Of course," blurted several voices, and Roy and Henry added simultaneously, "I'll get the car."

"I think not," Jean snapped, very angry at her son. "You sat around here all afternoon watching Carol do all the work cooking that meal before we got here, Roy Arthur, so you can just park your behind right back in that chair and wait here while you harbor your delusions that you're guaranteed a son. And Sam, maybe you ought to think about that yourself, because you're where Roy gets his attitude from. Henry, Martha, if you don't mind, I'd like to go along with you."

Jack broke in then, "Dad, hey, let me take her. You folks stay here and have something to eat—don't want that meal and all Carol's work going to waste. Mrs. Martin, you're welcome to come if you want, but I gotta warn you, my car'll hold only four people tops."

"I'll go along," Martha said. "Thanks for coming, Jean."

"Now Jack, you be careful driving," Henry warned ritualistically, and Jack rolled his eyes and assured him he would. Jean and Martha helped Carol out the door; as she let them gently pull her along, Carol caught a glimpse of her husband, whose expression was stunned and disbelieving. _Please, please, let his mother get through to him,_ she pleaded silently, before another pain overtook her and her mind was redirected onto entirely another track.


	7. Chapter 7

**CAROL TAKES A STAND**

Late that evening, somewhat after ten o'clock, Carol gave birth—to a second baby girl. Jack and Martha were allowed to come in and see her and their newest family member, while Jean lingered long enough to call Roy and Carol's apartment and let everyone else know. "She's adorable!" Martha exclaimed softly, gazing at the newborn. "I think she has your nose, Carol."

"She's _tiny,"_ Jack said, eyeing his new niece a little doubtfully. "And man, look how red she is."

"All newborns are red, John Christopher Tyler," his mother scolded without too much heat. "It just means she's normal. And of course she's tiny, she was just born."

"Well, yeah, but I mean…Carol was so…_huge,_ when she was pregnant. I just thought the kid would be a lot bigger than that," Jack tried to explain.

"Tiny?" Carol snorted, glaring at him. "I'll have you know this child weighed eight pounds, fourteen ounces!"

Their mother laughed. "Wait till you get married and have a baby someday, son. If he or she looks small and red, that's fine, as long as the baby's healthy." She reached out and ever so lightly rubbed a fingertip on the baby's cheek. "What'll you name her?"

"I've decided I'm going to call her Janice Marie Martin," Carol said. "No help from Roy on that, of course."

"Janice Marie, huh?" Jack mused. "That name's as big as she is. Hi there, Jan, how ya doing?" The baby opened her eyes and stared blankly up at him, and he grinned widely. "Yeah, kiddo, it's me, your Uncle Jack. Getting used to being in a nice dry environment and breathing in all this nice fresh air?"

Martha and Carol couldn't help laughing. "Oh, Jack," Martha said.

"Sounds to me like you and Jan are going to be close," Carol said. "That's good…" Her mood sank, and she looked worriedly at her mother. "Because I'm afraid of Roy's reaction."

Jean walked in just then, and Jack remarked, "Well, I guess you're about to find out, sis."

"Do they all know?" Martha inquired while Jean stopped at the foot of Carol's bed.

"Yes, everyone knows. I talked to Mary—she told everybody else, and I heard plenty of cheers, but I don't know if Roy's voice was in there. All I can say is, it better have been. Honestly." Fuming, Jean edged around the bed to get a good look at baby Jan. "It's one thing for a man to want a son—nothing on earth wrong with that. But when he wants it to the point that he refuses to even consider the possibility of having a daughter, and rejects the whole idea of a little girl, well—that just burns me right up. And I'm telling you, it's all Samuel's fault. Come to think of it, he'd better have cheered too." She shook her head in disgust, then drew herself up straight and cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, everyone. Oh my goodness, will you just look at that precious baby. What's her name, Carol?"

"Janice Marie," said Carol, "and thanks to my little brother here, I guess she's Jan for short." The women chuckled and Jack grinned a little sheepishly, rocking back and forth on his heels and toes.

"She just kinda looks like a Jan, y'know?" he said cheerfully. "Look, sis, all kidding aside, she really is cute. Marcia's gonna love having a little sister. Hey, Mrs. Martin, Carol almost named Marcia after our mom—Marcia, Martha. Now she's almost named this one after you—Jan, Jean."

Carol blinked and then laughed. "My gosh, I did, didn't I, and that never even crossed my mind. Well, I hope you don't mind, Jean."

Jean laughed delightedly. "My goodness, how can I possibly mind? Even if it wasn't intentional, it was still a lovely gesture, and thank you, Carol, I'm just thrilled to pieces."

"Look, if you ladies want to stay awhile, I'll pop back on over to Roy and Carol's place and update them on the baby's name and so forth. I'll come back and pick you up, Mom and Mrs. Martin, and Carol and Jan can have a nice night of rest. How's that sound?" Jack offered.

Jean sighed. "I think I'd better go along with you, Jack, in case I have to defuse my son and even my husband. I wouldn't want Henry, and Mary and Roger, feeling uncomfortable…" She shrugged.

Martha reached across Carol's bed and patted her arm. "I understand completely, Jean, and it's quite all right. Actually, Jack, we'll both go on back with you and let Carol have some rest—she's had quite an evening. But Jan certainly came much faster than Marcia did, so maybe you'll recover faster."

"That'd be nice," Carol murmured. "Thanks for being here, Mom and Jean, and I'm glad you got us here so fast, Jack. I appreciate it."

Jack glanced at his mother and Jean, then smiled crookedly. "To tell you the truth, I figured we just needed to get you away from Roy and his blustering—that's why I volunteered to bring you. Sorry, Mrs. Martin."

"Don't apologize, Jack; Roy does bluster, and it's not enjoyable to listen to. If he shows any hostility toward Jan, I'll make sure he gets a piece of my mind, and that he'll never forget it as long as he lives. And if he does it when we're not around, Carol, for goodness' sake don't let him get away with it."

Carol thought that over after they had left. She gazed down at little Jan, who had fallen asleep again, and heaved a long sigh. "If your father knows what's good for you, he'll welcome you into the family," she said softly. "You can't help being a girl, and it's nobody's fault—not that there's anything to fault anyone for in the first place. You're my precious little girl, just like your big sister Marcia, and that's all there is to it." She lay back against her pillows; despite her little pep talk, she still dreaded seeing Roy.

‡ ‡ ‡

Carol didn't see Roy till she and Jan were discharged from the hospital and he came to pick her up. Marcia, fascinated by the bundle in her mother's arms, insisted on climbing into Carol's lap to get a peek at her new baby sister. Roy, walking alongside Carol's wheelchair to the parking lot, glanced once at Jan's face peeking out of the blanket, but said nothing till the Martin family was in the car and on the way home. And even then it was only because Marcia forced him to it. "Daddy, Jan's a pretty baby," she said.

"Yeah, I guess so," Roy mumbled. He looked as if his dog had just died; his shoulders were a bit rounded, he hunched over the steering wheel, and he peered dejectedly straight ahead. He seemed to droop all over.

"I suppose that's a grand compliment, coming from you," Carol complained, finally fed up beyond endurance. "I don't know where you get the attitude that boys are preferable to girls, but you're dead wrong, Roy Martin. And I'm tired of having to put up with your attitude, as if I somehow disappointed you by giving you another daughter. Well, let me just remind you of something—it's a scientific fact that it's the man who decides whether the baby's going to be a boy or a girl, not the woman. So if you think having daughters is something to be ashamed of, then keep in mind that you're the one responsible!"

Roy stared at her for so long that Carol had to grab the wheel and wrench the car straight. "Damn it, Roy," she yelled, enraged, "watch the road, or are you trying to kill us so you can find some other woman and start all over with some boys?"

For Carol to swear was so unusual that Roy was moved to pull over to the side of the road. "Holy Moses, Carol, what's gotten into you?" he blurted, still clearly taken off guard.

"You have, that's what," Carol snapped. "You obviously are sorry that we have another girl. That's just plain shameful, Roy, no matter what. You can't control what we get. That attitude is disgraceful, and furthermore, it's incredibly offensive. Ever since I got pregnant with Marcia, all I hear is, 'I'm having a son!' and 'Carol's giving me a boy!' and 'What a great father of sons I'll be!' Guess what: you're the father of daughters. Accept it and learn to live with it! Remember what our wedding vows said? 'For better or for worse'. Maybe the minister didn't exactly say it, but it also means 'for sons or for daughters'. Grow up, Roy, for crying out loud! _Just grow up!"_ She turned away from him, folded her arms over her chest and glared out the windshield. She was still weak from bearing Jan, still tired, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed and take a long nap.

In the back seat both girls were crying; Jan was emitting a thin, high-pitched _waa-waa-waa,_ and Marcia was sobbing, swiping at tears with her fists. "Mommy, don't fight with Daddy," she begged tearfully.

Carol waited for Roy to agree with this, but he said nothing, and she remained still. Another few minutes passed; then Roy steered the car back onto the road and drove slowly home. Except for Marcia's and Jan's crying, there was silence in the car; even the radio had been shut off.

Back in the apartment, Carol settled onto the sofa with Jan in her arms, giving the baby a bottle; Marcia, looking timid, cuddled up beside her, watching her feed the baby. Roy gingerly lowered himself into his favorite armchair and thumbed through a sports magazine a couple of times, without really reading anything in it; then, at last, he looked over at them. "Carol?" he ventured.

She looked back, keeping her face carefully expressionless. "Yes, Roy?" she responded neutrally.

Roy started to speak, caught himself and frowned, tried again and failed twice more, and finally dropped the magazine onto the floor with a listless thwack. "You…you're right, babe," he said, a little hoarsely and almost too low for Carol to hear. "It's nobody's fault we keep having girls." He smiled faintly, though it looked as if he were trying to relearn the skill. "Except maybe mine."

Carol couldn't help it: she grinned. "You could say that," she teased.

Roy finally laughed, got up and joined his wife and daughters on the sofa, for the first time taking a really good look at Jan. "So what's her full name again?" he asked.

"Jan Martin," Marcia supplied immediately, and Roy and Carol both burst into laughter. Roy tipped aside and kissed Carol's cheek, and she felt better. Maybe things would be all right after all.


	8. Chapter 8

**ROY'S BOY'S TOY**

Jan wasn't yet a month old when Marcia turned three, and Roy and Carol threw her a big birthday party, inviting every member of both their families as well as Roy's business partner, Carol's friend Katie and her family—the first time they'd seen each other since Katie moved—and Ellie. As a result, the room Marcia and Jan now shared was destined to be filled with toys, although of course Marcia got a couple of cute new outfits from her paternal grandparents; and most of the family brought things for Jan as well, taking the opportunity to present Carol with blankets, sleepers, and plenty of diapers. Carol still had most of Marcia's baby things, so she was recycling them, as well as the crib Marcia had slept in till a few months before.

At one point Ellie sidled up to Carol, looking bewildered. "I just don't understand it, Carol," she said, staring at Jan, who was on Martha's shoulder sleeping through the whole thing. "You were so big—I just knew it was going to be a boy. How in the world could you have had a girl?"

Carol glanced at her husband, handing Marcia another birthday present, and then said whimsically, "Ask Roy, he's the one who decided." She giggled to herself, even though Ellie stared blankly at her.

"But…my mother…" Ellie finally mumbled, shaking her head slowly in confusion. "Every single time, it worked. Big carry, it was a boy. Small carry, it was a girl…"

"My doctor says that might have been true with your mother, but all women are different," Carol told her gently. "Carrying big or small doesn't guarantee you're having one or the other. You just get what you get, no matter what size you are."

Ellie sighed. "I suppose so," she said, her gaze drifting to Jan again. "It's only…I was so _sure."_

"Well, now you know it's only an old wives' tale," Carol said.

Ellie wrinkled up her entire face at that and frowned. "I wouldn't call it that," she said, sounding somewhat offended. "After all, like I keep telling you, it worked with my mother."

"Pure luck, Ellie," Carol insisted, trying to keep her voice gentle. She really did like Ellie, who had been a big help to her when Roy was at work and her mother couldn't be there to assist; but sometimes Ellie's naïve, silly ideas just got on her nerves. "If you don't believe a doctor, you're not going to believe anybody. Who knows, if we have another baby, I might carry small and come up with a boy." _And wouldn't Roy love that,_ she couldn't help thinking.

"You just had a baby," Katie protested, overhearing, "and now already you're talking about another one?"

"It's purely theoretical, Katie," Carol said and laughed. "No, I'd like for Jan to be at least old enough to be thinking about potty training before we try again."

"Did Marcia regress now that there's a baby in the house?" Katie asked knowingly. Her son had done that when her daughter was born.

"Yes, she's having more accidents," Carol admitted. "The doctor says she'll get over it eventually, but it won't be soon enough for me. Changing one child's diapers is bad enough."

"Tell me about it," Katie said, laughing. "I'm so glad Heather is doing as well as she is with her potty training. Oh…by the way, Carol, wouldn't you know it—we go and buy a nice little house, and Don's being transferred out of state. We're moving to Colorado in about six months."

Ellie wrinkled up her face again. "Oh dear. All that snow. You'll get homesick for sunny California in no time flat, Katie."

Katie grinned. "I've been here all my life, but I think it's exciting. You always hear all the stories and see all the propaganda about white Christmases. I'm looking forward to having my first one, and the kids're gonna love it. And don't worry, Carol, we'll send pictures."

Carol grinned. "I know what snow looks like. I spent the first ten years of my life in Swampscott, Massachusetts, just to remind you. We had a few white ones ourselves." Her smile faded a bit and she looked wistfully at her friend. "We'll really miss you."

"We'll miss you too, but we can keep in touch. Letters are wonderful inventions. It's so nice to get something in the mailbox besides bills and junk," Katie joked, and Carol laughed.

Roy's glum mood lifted a few days after Marcia's birthday; he got a large and quite lucrative job in a downtown Los Angeles office building, and for the next month or so he and Carol did much better financially. It was a relief to Carol, whose nest egg had been depleted by almost half by her hospital stay when she gave birth to Jan. Roy and his partner had minimal insurance, but it had paid for only a third of the hospital expenses, and Carol was looking forward to building her account back up.

Jan grew into a chubby and cheerful baby, and Marcia was delighted when she tried to play with her little sister and Jan responded. Roy began to take some paternal pride in his daughters, and Carol belatedly realized that at least part of his good mood was due to the upswing in his workload. Her life got smoother, although she still had a lot of work, between the household chores, feeding and changing Jan, and trying to maintain Marcia's potty-training progress.

Jan had just celebrated her first birthday, and they were getting ready for Marcia's fourth, when Roy once more brought up the idea of having a baby. "Jan'll be walking any day now, I bet," he said, watching the child pull herself to her feet using the coffee table. "If you get pregnant now, she'll be almost old enough to help a little bit with the baby…and we might finally get that son."

Carol slanted him a wary look. After what she'd been through with him over Marcia and Jan, she knew better than to be overly optimistic. "What if it's yet another girl?" she asked. "Theoretically speaking, of course. I'm really not ready yet to have another baby, Roy."

Roy lifted his hands. "I know, babe, I know," he said. "Like you said, theoretically speaking. Well…I guess we could end up with another girl, but hey…what're the odds, huh? Third time's the charm, that's what they say. Will you think about it, at least?"

"Maybe in a few months, or another year," Carol said. "Roy, I know you really want a boy, but I've got my hands full as it is with Jan and Marcia. Could I have a little break, please? Besides, the older they are if I do have another baby, the more they'll be able to help me out."

"Uh," Roy grunted, pondering this. "Yeah, I see your point. Well, okay…maybe another year, but I'll bring it up again when Jan hits the big T-W-O." He grinned when Carol laughed.

A few weeks passed, and Jan took her first steps; Marcia, thrilled, developed a habit of taking Jan's hand and navigating the entire apartment with her, to help her practice walking. Carol's nest egg had been growing nicely, and Roy had even treated her to a dinner out a couple of times since Jan's birth, leaving the girls with Carol's parents and enjoying an evening out. Life was good; Roy was happy, Carol was happy, their girls were happy. What could be sweeter?

Carol got Roy's idea of an answer to that when Jan was fifteen months old. For some reason, one morning Roy took the bus to his latest plumbing job and left her their eight-year-old Studebaker, puzzling her enormously. It was nice to have the car, and just to take advantage of it, she packed up Marcia and Jan, put them in the backseat and took them to the park, then grocery shopping. The latter was something of a mistake, because while Jan fell asleep, Marcia kept asking for all sorts of junk food that Carol had to deny her. It was a relief to get home; Marcia was sulking, Jan was a soundly slumbering deadweight who had to be carried upstairs along with the grocery bags, and the day was unusually warm. Carol had been thinking of getting a room air-conditioning unit to keep them comfortable in the summer, even though it would take a significant bite out of her savings.

She put Jan down for her afternoon nap, tried and failed to get Marcia to help her with the groceries, and finally told Marcia to go and play quietly. Marcia slunk off to the living room, in a blue funk because she hadn't been allowed to pick out any candy, and Carol put away the groceries with a hopeful glance toward the clock. Maybe soon this day would be over and they could start fresh tomorrow.

She had just finished when Roy walked in, grinning from ear to ear and jingling change in his pocket. "Hi, babe!" he said brightly. "How was the day?"

"So-so," Carol said, glancing back toward the living room and hoping Marcia was playing quietly the way she had been told to. "Well, you certainly look happy."

"You bet, babe," Roy said and practically giggled. "Wait till you see what I got." He was still jingling change, and Carol frowned.

"Roy," she protested, "you know that habit really gets on my nerves."

He whipped something out of his pocket and dangled it in the air before her eyes. "Get a load of this!" he crowed. "These, babe, are the keys to a brand-new, 1960 model, Chevrolet Corvette!"

Carol gaped at him; her jaw hung, and she thought for a second or two that she must be dreaming. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing would come out. Roy watched, still grinning like a madman, and at last she managed to come up with a semi-intelligent comment. "Where on earth did you get the money?"

"Been saving up for that down payment," he said proudly. He was plainly extremely pleased with himself. "It's a terrific car, babe! Price was lower too, 'cause they're trying to make room for the '61 models, y'know, and they were willing to shave two thousand bucks off the asking price. By '65 I'll have it paid off, and we can enjoy it for years! You know what a tinkerer I am…"

Carol nodded, still gawking. The only reason their increasingly creaky Studebaker still ran was Roy's meticulous care of the thing; he certainly knew his stuff, which made him both a good plumber and a decent car mechanic. But she just couldn't believe he'd found the money for something so extravagant, when he could have been saving for the down payment on a house, or at least been able to move them to a much nicer apartment. "Roy…" Carol finally squeaked in dazed, lightheaded protest.

"Don't you worry," Roy told her, coming to her and patting her shoulder. "You can drive it too, babe. Hey, we're flush! Hal and I are getting plenty of work and it pays terrific, you know that."

"But I thought…we could have gotten a bigger apartment," Carol finally found her voice. "Or maybe even started looking for a nice house."

Roy sighed. "I thought you'd be happy for me. I can drive the 'Vette to work and you can use the Stude while I'm out, and you won't have to take the bus. And the Stude's free and clear, so we have payments just on the 'Vette. We're okay, Carol. This place isn't really all that bad, is it? C'mon, I fixed all the plumbing in the building when we first moved in, remember? And I've done my own repairs in here, plastered up the wall cracks and painted, and…" He paused, trying to read her expression. "Oh, I think I get it. You want something new for yourself too, don'tcha. Hey, babe, that's perfectly okay. Go ahead and get us some new curtains, or pick out a nice living-room set, or maybe we can get a new TV. That thing we have in there is about shot anyway. Okay?" He grinned again and then hung the key ring on a hook near the door. "We're good, babe, I swear. Don't worry about a thing. Say, what's for dinner?"

Carol sighed gently and gave up. All she could think was that maybe this was Roy's consolation prize to himself because he was surrounded by females. Maybe she couldn't really begrudge him that; after all, he did provide everything she and the girls needed, and he was still a good father to Marcia and Jan. And she had her secret savings account, her insurance for herself and the girls in case anything ever happened. Let Roy have his plaything. Boys would be boys, and boys liked their toys. She turned to the cabinets and began considering what to make for supper, suddenly snickering to herself when she heard Roy's voice in the living room cheerfully greeting the girls. _Haven't seen that car yet,_ she reflected, _but I'm going to christen it anyway. I hereby dub thee Roy's Boy's Toy._ The sound of the evening news filled the living room, allowing Carol to quietly indulge in her mirth without being discovered. She'd learned to laugh at as many things as she could in the past year or so. How else were you going to cope?


	9. Chapter 9

**CHRISTMAS RUMINATIONS**

By fall Carol had begun to worry slightly about her nest egg. Roy was certainly working as much as ever and easily making his car payments, but he was giving her less money each time he was paid. Sometimes she got as little as five dollars. She dared not complain about it; something in her had come to the understanding that Roy should never know about her secret savings account, or he'd find some way to clean it out. But it was growing far more slowly than it had before, and even now with Jan about a year and a half old, it contained less than two-thirds what it had before she was born.

Christmas rolled around and Roy and Carol left the girls with his parents, then went out to do Christmas shopping for them. Carol still enjoyed looking along the aisles of girls' toys, with little play kitchens, dress-up accessories, fake-makeup kits, even little nurses' or teachers' playsets—and of course, the endless, ubiquitous baby dolls. She spent some time perusing the aisle and finally chose for Jan a doll that came with two extra outfits, in case the little girl wanted to change its clothes. It also had two little plastic baby bottles and even some little cloth "diapers"; Jan, Carol had noticed, liked appropriating her cousin Chrissy's doll whenever Mary and her family came to visit, and seemed to be a very maternal child. It was hard to imagine Jan that old, but Carol thought fondly that someday she'd be a great mother.

Marcia, on the other hand, was more into clothes and dressing up, and Carol had the distinct feeling her intensely feminine firstborn wouldn't appreciate baby dolls anymore. Cradling the box containing Jan's future "offspring" and its accessories, she meandered down the aisle wondering about the dress-up and makeup sets, shaking her head at the latter—imagine a preschool girl learning how to wear makeup!—and finally deciding that her mother and Jean had enough old clothes between them to provide plenty of dress-up fun for Marcia. But what did that leave her?

Then she spotted the new Barbie dolls in rows, staring solemnly out from their boxes. The doll had come out just the previous year, but Carol hadn't felt her daughters were old enough yet for her. This year, perhaps Marcia would get a kick out of owning one. They were just a little more expensive than Carol was comfortable with, but she had a feeling Marcia's enjoyment of this gift would be well worth the purchase price. She scanned the dolls and finally picked one out, and then turned to see what Roy thought; he'd been so quiet all the way through. But he wasn't there, and she wondered in surprise where he'd gotten off to. She came out the end of the aisle and began to stroll slowly past the subsequent ones, checking for him.

She wasn't exactly surprised to find him standing in an aisle full of boys' toys, particularly cars and trucks in all sizes. "Dreaming again?" Carol asked teasingly, catching up with him.

Roy smiled wistfully. "Yeah, I guess so. This is the kinda stuff I would've loved, growing up. Just look at all these great things, babe. Roy Junior would've loved 'em, if we'd had him." Carol gave him a funny look and he shrugged. "Well, you know what I mean."

She did know what he meant, and she sighed gently to herself. "Maybe someday," she said just to placate him, though at the moment she still wasn't too keen on the idea of trying again. Marcia and Jan could be a handful, as much as she loved her two girls. She glanced around and marveled at the sheer number of plastic and metal vehicles surrounding them. _At least he isn't suggesting cap guns and camouflage gear!_ she consoled herself, and smiled at him. "I tell you what, you could get a few of the smaller plastic ones for Alan. Mary and Roger'd like that, and you'd get to pick out some of these. Meanwhile, what do you think of these? This one's for Jan, and I got this for Marcia. Maybe we should get some of those little Barbie clothes for her too. I could get a little bin or box of some kind for her to keep them in, so she doesn't lose them."

"Yeah," Roy agreed, already glazing over, his attention wandering back to the toys. Carol shook her head and left him standing there while she searched out some clothes for the Barbie doll.

Christmas was a success; as it turned out, in addition to the gifts Carol had gotten the girls (which she made certain to label from both herself and Roy, in front of him), Marcia got a second Barbie doll from Henry and Martha, and a bunch of little Barbie outfits from Mary, complete with shoes. Mary confessed to Carol that she was enamored of Barbie herself. "Chrissy couldn't care less about Barbie, but I like her. I wish we'd had her when we were growing up."

Carol grinned; she sometimes thought Mary's love of nice clothes had been passed on to Marcia. "It's so funny, they even come with shoes. I got her a box to keep them in, but I suspect I'll be finding miniature plastic shoes all over the place."

Mary laughed. "Yeah, and vacuuming them up by accident, too. My next-door neighbor says that happens to her all the time—her daughter loves Barbie, and she's always buying new shoes to replace missing ones. She said that doll's had more shoes in a year than she's ever owned in her entire life." Just then her toddler son, Alan, crawled by pushing a big, colorful plastic dump truck, and she laughed. "I bet Roy's thrilled we had a little boy. Alan just loves that truck."

Carol nodded. "It was a perfect choice. He still hopes we can try one more time. In fact, he warned me he'd start asking once Jan turns two."

"Oh boy," murmured Mary. "I think Roger and I are going to stop with the two we have. It's getting more expensive to raise kids, you know? Oh…how's Roy's business doing? Is he very busy? The shower in our bathroom's getting really bad, and Roger was hoping Roy could come over sometime and fix it."

"I don't see why not. Roy always appreciates getting more business." Carol briefly entertained the wild thought of having Mary ask Roger if they could pay her, rather than Roy, just so she'd have a little extra something to put in the savings account. But she dismissed it; it was Roy's work, not hers, and it wouldn't be fair for her to get paid for something she hadn't done. Still, if Roy was so "flush", as he'd claimed the day he bought Roy's Boy's Toy, why was he less generous with her now?

"Come on out and take a look at my baby," Roy boasted later, just after Christmas dinner had been eaten and several family members were still lingering over dessert. They were at the Tylers' house—Roy and Carol had taken the girls to Sam and Jean's for Christmas Eve—and of course, Roy had brought them here in the Corvette so he could show it off. "Jack, Rog? How 'bout it, Henry?"

The men trooped out, leaving Martha, Mary and Carol to watch the children playing with their toys while they finished the last of their dessert. Carol had baked her aunt Jenny's Black Forest Torte again, and it was impossible not to linger over the delicious confection. "You do this so well, Carol," Mary remarked, rolling her eyes in sheer joy. "If Aunt Jenny ever comes back from whatever weird corner of the world she's in, you should make this for her. She'll rave about it, and you'll be world-famous."

"Good old Aunt Jenny," Carol said, smiling and glancing absently out the window.

Martha followed her gaze. "I still can't believe Roy went out and bought that extravagant car. Where does he find the money for the payments?"

"My secret savings account, probably," Carol muttered, suddenly feeling annoyed.

Her mother and sister looked at each other. "What secret savings?" Martha asked.

Carol explained how Jack had advised her, not too long after Marcia's birth, to open a savings account in her name only, in case anything happened to Roy, so that she'd have a cushion for herself and the girls. "Roy still doesn't know I have it. Before Jan was born, he was incredibly generous about sharing his pay with me. Then Jan came along, and since Roy has only the minimum amount of medical insurance on himself and us, I had to pay the better part of the hospital expenses from that money. I'm still trying to replace it, but Roy doesn't give me very much money anymore. I think most of what he might have given me is going toward that car."

Mary frowned out the window, but Martha said gently, "Carol, you know he'd love a son. Maybe this is just his way of consoling himself."

"Why should he feel as if he has to do that?" Carol demanded, frustrated. "Marcia and Jan are wonderful girls, and he should be proud to be their father. But he's still fixated on having a boy. I'm dreading Jan's second birthday. How can I put him off? I just don't want to be pregnant right now."

"Tell him he can take over the chore of changing Jan's diapers till she's potty-trained," Mary suggested wickedly. "That'll shut him up."

"I doubt it," Carol muttered. "I wouldn't even be able to get him to do it once, never mind all the time. If Jan were a boy, now, that might do it…but no."

"Male chauvinist pig," Mary said.

"Mary, ease up on your sister," Martha said.

Mary rolled her eyes. "Mom, you know he is! He really doesn't treat Carol the way he should. Sure, he was generous when they had just Marcia, but that's because he was so sure the next baby would be a boy. So now, since they got Jan instead, he's punishing Carol for producing girls instead of boys."

"Are you really sure about that?" Carol countered. "I made it clear to him that the father decides the sex of the baby, not the mother. I don't think he knew that before. At least, he sure looked shocked." Martha and Mary both laughed, and Carol felt better.

"Now I think I know why he bought that thing," Mary joked. "He probably figures if he acts more masculine, his body might realize that he's dropping hints and next time there'll be a boy."

"Mary!" Carol blurted, laughing in spite of herself. "I wonder what Roger thinks of that crazy sense of humor of yours!"

"He likes it," Mary said with a smug grin. "His is just like it, so we're perfect for each other. Anyway, Carol, I'm just trying to sympathize with you. You should have a say in whether the two of you have another kid. After all, you're the one who has to carry the baby and put up with all the side effects and aches and pains and bloating and everything else. All he has to do is make a contribution and then stand back and watch."

"There's still a fifty-fifty chance every time you try," Martha said, "but Mary's right, Carol. You're the one who does almost all the work in making a baby. Don't let Roy talk you into another pregnancy if you aren't ready for one. And as for that car…well, I guess all you can do is allow him his indulgence and just keep squirreling away as much as you can. After all, if he's in the dark about that account, you can't complain too much about his not giving you money."

"Oh yes I can," Carol said grimly. "And you just wait, I'll find a way to do it."


	10. Chapter 10

**DOUBLE TRAGEDY**

Carol figured out in fairly short order how to get more money out of Roy. She started deliberately buying the cheapest cuts of meat at the butcher's, choosing the inexpensive—and inferior—brands of Roy's favorite foods, and generally cutting corners in her grocery shopping in every way she could think of. It didn't take Roy long to notice the difference. "What's wrong with the food?" he asked within a week.

"What do you mean, what's wrong with it?" Carol asked innocently. "It tastes fine to me."

Marcia unwittingly helped by making a face. "It tastes funny, Mommy," she piped up. "We used to have yummy pasketti and meatballs. Now the sauce tastes funny and the meat's not nice anymore."

Inwardly Carol smiled. _Bravo, Marcia!_ "Well, as a matter of fact, I've had to buy the least expensive versions of just about everything lately. I'm sorry, Roy, but food prices are going up…you know that. I've had to tighten the belt."

Roy scowled. "There's no reason to buy the cheapo stuff just because prices went up a tad. Look, you need more grocery money, I'll give it to you. And don't argue with me, Carol. I'm used to a certain level of cooking out of you, and even the kids prefer the good stuff—you heard Marcia a second ago."

"All right, Roy," Carol said demurely. "If you can spare an extra twenty dollars, that should be fine."

"Okay," Roy agreed a little gruffly and went back to his supper. Surprised and delighted at his easy capitulation, Carol reached over and cut up Marcia's meatballs, then refilled Jan's bottle with milk.

Then, just before the end of winter, they got a terrible shock. Jean, on her way to the grocery store not too far from where she and Sam lived, was hit by a passing city bus and died at the hospital less than an hour later. She had been crossing a street, and the bus driver, in swerving to avoid a dog that had run into the road, had seen Jean too late to keep from running her down.

"Sue the city, Dad," Roy demanded fervently the first time they saw Sam Martin after Jean's funeral. "That bus driver ran Mom down in cold blood. Sue the city for everything they've got, you can retire rich!"

Sam closed his eyes and wearily shook his head. "Roy, for Pete's sake, I'm already retired."

"But you won't have to worry about a dinky little social-security check anymore," Roy persisted. "File a suit, Dad, I'll help you. Let's see if I can get a good lawyer." He got up to get the phone book.

"Roy, dammit, sit down," Sam barked angrily. "The driver may have been at fault, but he didn't kill your mother in cold blood. He was trying not to hit some stupid mangy mutt that ran out in the road. If people would keep their lousy hounds on leashes like they're supposed to, these things wouldn't happen. It wasn't the driver's fault or your mother's. I'm not going out and suing the city. It'd be more time and trouble and money than it's worth. Besides, the city's compensating me in any case; I don't have to sue."

"Well, that's more like it," Roy said, sitting down again with some reluctance. "Well, then, we can sue the driver."

Sam exploded, "Roy, that's enough! Is that all your mother's memory's worth to you, a pot of gold? Have a little decency!" He shook his head disgustedly. "I'm sorry you had to sit here and listen to all this, Carol."

Carol cleared her throat uneasily. "It…it's all right, Sam."

"No, it's not all right," Sam grumbled, eyeing an embarrassed Roy from under hooded lids and scowling bushy gray brows. "It's in miserable taste, that's what it is. Jean was a damn good woman. She doesn't deserve that kind of treatment. Money won't make up for her being gone."

"Dad, I only meant…" Roy began weakly, then looked away, clenching his teeth to keep from breaking down, but his face betraying him.

Sam softened. "I know, son, I know. But money isn't the answer. Anyway, I've got all I need, I'm not hurting any. Now say, the girls' birthdays are coming up pretty soon, aren't they? How 'bout we have their parties here at the house. Jean would've wanted us to do that."

Carol was surprised at how sharply she felt Jean's absence, but she hadn't even remotely expected Roy's reaction. He seemed angry at the world. When she brought up Mary and Roger's bathroom problem and suggested he give them a discount because they were relatives, he flatly refused and wouldn't listen or even respond to any argument or plea Carol tried on him. Roger and Mary paid his asking price without comment, but later Mary called Carol and told her they'd been unable to help noticing Roy's surly disposition. "He's not taking it out on you or the girls, I hope."

"No," said Carol. "He's just dealing with Jean's death in the only way he knows how, I guess."

Both Marcia and Jan celebrated their birthdays at Sam's house, turning five and two respectively, and the day after Marcia's birthday she came into Roy and Carol's room at a startlingly early hour, tugging at the bedcovers till her parents woke up. "What're you doin', Marcia?" Roy mumbled, sleepy and irritable.

"It's time to go," Marcia said urgently, bouncing on the soles of her feet. "Hurry, Mommy and Daddy."

"Why? Go where?" Carol asked through a yawn.

"To school!" Marcia exclaimed. "Hurry!"

"You gotta be kidding," Roy said incredulously, propping himself up on one elbow and squinting at her in disbelief. "What're you talking about? You're not in school yet."

"I'm five now, Daddy," Marcia said importantly. "And everybody said as soon as I'm five, that's when I start going to kinnergarden. So we have to hurry so I can get to school on time."

Roy blinked in amazement, and Carol fell back on her pillow, laughing. "Not quite yet, honey," she explained when she'd gotten some control over herself. "We have to wait till this school year and the summer are over. In September you'll start with all the other little boys and girls who turn five this year, but you can't start right this minute. It doesn't work like that."

Marcia sulked, drawing circles on the floor with the toe of her shoe. "Aw, rats," she mumbled.

"I know you want to start school," Carol said comfortingly, sitting up again and hugging the little girl. "And you will, soon enough, believe me. There's just a few more months left to wait, that's all."

"Ridiculous," Roy grumbled, clearly unable to see the humor in the situation. "Well, I'm up, might as well start getting ready for work." He swung out of bed and headed for the bathroom, and Carol noticed for the first time that Marcia was completely dressed, all the way down to socks and shoes, as if to leave for school. She giggled again and hugged her daughter once more.

Carol's parents and Sam laughed at the story. "That's adorable," Martha said, delighted.

"Jean would've loved it," Sam agreed wistfully. Henry and Martha looked at each other; Roy frowned, and Carol compressed her lips. Sam looked around the room and rolled his eyes. "What're we supposed to do, stop talking about her? That's no way to honor my wife's memory."

"You're right, Sam, you're right," Henry said, nodding firmly. "Heck, when I go, I want to be remembered with smiles, not a waterworks. Martha, you and the girls best remember that."

"Henry," Martha grumbled, but without much heat. Henry patted her arm, and for a minute or so there was silence; then the conversation went off in another direction. But Roy refused to participate, and Carol wondered where all his anger was coming from. She would have thought he'd be depressed, not mad at the world. Maybe he still wanted to sue that poor hapless bus driver.

It took Carol a few more weeks to realize, very suddenly and to her enormous surprise, that Jean's death had affected Roy so heavily that he hadn't once brought up the subject of trying for a boy, even though Jan's second birthday was well past. Once, when she was alone, she sneaked a glance skyward and whispered, "Jean, you're still looking out for us, aren't you? Thank you."

The summer passed quietly, and Carol went out in mid-August and started buying a few school dresses for Marcia to attend kindergarten in. Mary helped by donating Chrissy's outgrown dresses, and Carol was also able to shop secondhand stores and find some nice items for her fashion-conscious little daughter. Marcia was very excited, and insisted on helping to pick out her own school supplies, which consisted actually of little more than a package of pencils and a small plastic change purse to carry milk money in.

And then, two days before school opened, Sam Martin suffered a fatal heart attack. Roy was devastated, and shut down completely during the funeral and burial. Carol held both girls at her side; Jan seemed a little confused, still too young to fully understand what was going on, but obviously aware that it was a sober occasion. She stood with her hand in Carol's and her other thumb in her mouth. Marcia was crying copious tears. Roy simply looked as if he were still reeling from a brutal blow to the head; his eyes were wide with shock and his face was almost blank, but with a tinge of disbelief.

"You sure he's gonna be all right, Carol?" asked Jack, standing nearby while Henry and Martha helped Mary and Roger control a rambunctious Alan. "He looks…I don't know, he just looks like he got hit in the head with a shovel."

"I know," Carol murmured. "I'm not sure how he's going to take it. Losing both his parents in the same year…" She shook her head and stared at the ground for a few seconds, then looked up at her younger brother. "I'll tell you what, it sure makes me grateful to have you and Mary, and Mom and Dad."

Jack smiled a little. "Me too. Let us know if you guys need any help, okay?"

Carol had enrolled Marcia in kindergarten, but kept her out of the first day of school because of her grandfather's funeral. The following morning she brought Marcia to school and explained the circumstances to her new teacher, who nodded with sympathy. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Martin. Is Marcia all right? Maybe it'll help her to settle into school and make some new friends here."

"I'm hoping so too," Carol agreed. "She cried buckets, but she seems to be okay. Marcia, honey, will you be all right here at school?"

Marcia looked up, subdued but quiet, and nodded. "I still want to be a kinnergarden kid, Mommy," she assured Carol solemnly.

Carol and the teacher both laughed softly. "Good for you, honey," Carol said. "I think you'll have a good time, and you'll probably have some new friends before the end of the day. I'll see you at noontime."

"Bye, Mommy," Marcia said, and the teacher gave Carol a reassuring nod. Slowly Carol departed, her thoughts turning to Roy. He had said very little since his father's death, and she was really starting to worry about him.

When she got home she found Jan playing by herself in the middle of the living-room floor, surrounded by baby dolls and their paraphernalia, and Roy sitting on the sofa staring into space. "Roy?" she ventured softly. "Talk to me. You're starting to frighten me."

Roy shook his head and let it fall forward and hang. "Not much to say, babe," he mumbled.

Carol waited, but he didn't move, and she finally said hopefully, "It looks like Marcia's going to settle into school just fine."

"Huh," was all Roy said.

Carol sighed, gave up and went to make up the beds. She'd just have to give him some time; Sam's death was a terrible blow, coming atop Jean's passing as it had, and it was still too fresh. It was to be expected that Roy would need some time to absorb the event.

But by the time Marcia had been in school a month, she knew things had to change. Roy was still listless, and though he went to work, he had no enthusiasm for it. He still barely spoke to Carol or the girls, and she was on the verge of panic. Nothing she said or did seemed to have any effect on him, and she finally began to consider the most drastic possible move. It was a gamble, but maybe it'd work.


	11. Chapter 11

**THE RETURN OF HOPE**

Carol approached Roy with a little trepidation that evening, the day she made her decision. He was standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth, going through the motions in a mechanical way that nearly discouraged her from her mission. But she didn't know what else to do. She took a deep breath, sidled up behind him, put a hand on his back and offered softly, "Roy, what would you say about…about trying for that little boy you want so much?"

At first he didn't react; he just finished brushing his teeth, spat out his toothpaste and rinsed. Then he straightened up and looked at her anxious face in the mirror. "Run that by me again?" he requested, a slight frown on his face.

"I thought…we could try for a son," Carol said softly. "I have to tell you, Roy, I'm worried about you. You're just too quiet and sad, and I don't think Sam would have wanted this for you. Maybe if we have a boy this time, we can name him after your father."

Roy stilled, staring at her through the mirror, his gaze losing focus as he considered this. Then, at last, a tiny smile broke forth on his face, and Carol's relief soared. "You know, babe," he said slowly, "you might just be right. Yeah, let's do it. We'll have that boy and he'll be a tribute to Dad."

Carol knew perfectly well she was taking a risk, but Roy's happiness was so good to see after all this time that she didn't dare push her luck. As her mother had once said, it was a fifty-fifty chance, after all. If they succeeded and she became pregnant, she could deal with the possibility of getting a third girl then.

Marcia's second month in school had elapsed when Carol got the confirmation that she was indeed pregnant; apparently they'd succeeded on their very first try. She broke the news to Roy and the girls that evening at supper. Roy beamed; Marcia looked astonished, and Jan blinked, as if trying to figure this out. "Oh boy," Marcia exclaimed. "I hope we have a girl!"

"Baby girl," Jan parroted. She and Marcia were quite close, and Marcia didn't seem to mind setting aside her Barbie dolls now and then to help Jan change her dolls' diapers.

"Don't you think we got enough girls?" Roy inquired, to Carol's relief couching the question in a playful tone. "How 'bout this time we hope for a boy? You two could have fun with a little brother."

Marcia made a face. "Uh-uh, Daddy. Boys aren't any fun. The ones in my class in school always come over and knock down the dollhouse when me and Susie and Paula're playing. They always say mean things and they run around and act yucky. I don't like boys. They're messy."

"Daddy's a boy," Carol put in, seeing the amazement on Roy's face.

"No he's not, he's Daddy," said Marcia. "I said before, boys are messy, and Daddy isn't messy, so that means he's not a boy."

Carol burst out laughing, and even Roy started snickering. "Listen, kiddo, I used to be a boy, a long time ago," Roy said. "Boys get older and they stop being messy." At Carol's suspicious look, he grinned and amended, "Well, maybe some of 'em do. But they do quit being nasty most of the time. When they grow up, they don't run around knocking down dollhouses and calling you names."

"Well, I hope the boys in my class grow up fast, then," said Marcia. "But I still don't want a little brother. I mean, he's gonna be messy too, you know."

"All babies are messy, honey, not just boys," said Carol. "If it's a girl, she'll be messy too."

"Well, babies can't help it," Marcia persisted with a five-year-old's logic. "But boys're messier than girls."

Roy and Carol looked at each other. "How do you know?" Carol asked.

"'Cause my friend Paula…? You know, in school? Paula has a baby brother, and she said every time her mommy changes his diaper, he pees right in the air. _Whoooooo!_ Just like a fountain!" Marcia explained, lifting both arms high over her head and then spreading them out to either side in demonstration. Roy almost exploded, letting out an involuntary raspberry and slamming a hand over his mouth, and Carol sat with her mouth open, gaping at her daughter and trying with very little success not to smile. "And Paula says that's 'cause baby boys have these funny little pipes that they pee out of, and their little pipes stick up straight in the air, so all the pee goes all over the room like a fountain."

By now Roy had propped his head in his hands, elbows on the table, and was shaking with pent-up mirth. Carol's voice was unsteady with her own dammed-up laughter. "Well, baby boys can't help that," she managed to say without dissolving into glee.

"But it's _yucky,"_ Marcia said, making such a revolted face that it broke Carol's control and she fell back in her chair with delight. "Gosh, Daddy, you really want a boy? Girls don't have little pipes to pee out of, so they're not so messy." At last Roy's laughter broke through, and Carol couldn't help feeling glad about that too. He hadn't laughed like that since before Jean died.

"We'll take the chance," Roy finally said, reaching over and patting Marcia's head. "And don't worry, it'll be fun, you'll see."

"Girl," Jan suddenly said firmly. "Girls pitty, boys yucky." Again Roy and Carol broke down laughing, and Carol quietly blessed her daughters. In their shared desire for another sister, they had unknowingly helped her to warn Roy that they stood as much chance of getting a third daughter as they did of having a first son. This time it might just be easier.

‡ ‡ ‡

After Christmas (and the humor of having Marcia and Jan insist that she put "baby sister" on their lists for Santa when she wrote them out), Sam and Jean's house finally sold, and along with the rest of the effects of his parents' estates, Roy received the money, according to his father's will which had been revised about a month after Jean's death. Carol had hoped they would move into the house themselves, for it was a nice place and she had long wished that Jan and Marcia could have a yard to play in. But Roy had pointed out that it had only two bedrooms, like their apartment, and that they could use the money for other things. One of those things, as Carol learned, was the full and early payoff of Roy's Boy's Toy; another was a smiling bestowal on her of one thousand dollars from her husband. "This is for you, babe," he said. "You can use it for anything you want. Buy yourself a whole new wardrobe if you want, or get some stuff for the little guy in there." He patted Carol's midsection, which was still flat at the moment.

"Oh, maybe," Carol said with a smile. "How sweet, Roy, and so thoughtful. Thank you."

After some rumination Carol decided to take a hundred dollars and invest in baby things, primarily diapers. If they had another girl, she could use the things she still had stored away from Marcia's and Jan's infancy; and if they did have a boy this time, Mary had promised that she could have all of Alan's outgrown baby things. Jan had just graduated from the crib to a bed of her own, so they wouldn't need another one, and they also still had a serviceable high chair and playpen. Along with the diapers, Carol also bought three new baby bottles and a few toys, and once she'd done that, she banked the rest of the money. It swelled her savings account very nicely, and she felt ready to welcome their third child into the family when the time came.

Although Marcia and Jan made it no secret that they wanted a baby sister, Roy was still as convinced they were having a boy as he'd been when Carol was pregnant with Jan. Marcia didn't like this and made it very clear, so that often she and Roy had little fights about it. Roy was usually playful, but Marcia was dead serious, and that made it amusing. Jan wasn't quite as feisty as her older sister, but she didn't hold back on agreeing with Marcia and would say, "I want a girl," every time.

Meanwhile Carol's abdomen gradually swelled, and late in her fifth month she felt the baby move within her for the first time. Delighted, she shared the sensation with her daughters, whose eyes went wide with astonishment at the feeling of their unborn sibling moving around within their mother's stomach. "Wow," said Jan, who had picked up the word from Marcia. She was nearly three now, and Marcia would soon celebrate her sixth birthday. The baby was due in the summer.

Roy came home from work and caught the girls with their hands all over Carol's stomach. "Kid kicking around in there?" he inquired. He was in a better mood since Carol had gotten pregnant, although he now often had quiet, introspective moments when he'd sit and stare into space, losing track of everything that went on around him. It was a new side to him, and Carol knew that he was still adjusting to the loss of his parents; but she had a feeling the baby had gone a long way towards helping him. For Roy's sake she was hoping for a boy, but it wouldn't bother her at all to have a girl. Roy seemed lighthearted about Marcia's and Jan's preference for another sister, so Carol had hopes in case they did get a girl.

"Yeah," said Marcia excitedly. "Come feel, Daddy! I think it's an elbow!"

"It feels like a footie," Jan said. She used the diminutive, pet form of most nouns, especially when talking to her baby dolls. She had developed the notion that the forthcoming baby was a live doll.

Roy grinned at the girls and said deliberately, "Maybe it's a little pipe." He had never forgotten Marcia's story of her friend Paula's baby brother, and had taken enormous glee in repeating it to Carol's family.

"Oh, Roy," Carol scolded, trying not to smile. "We had enough of that little tale."

"Girls don't have little pipes, Daddy, 'member?" Marcia asked with the kind of strained patience Carol recognized from some of her own dealings with the girls. "It can't be a little pipe if it's a girl."

"It's not a girl," Roy said, and this time he sounded truly serious, instead of playful. "We're having a boy, and his name's going to be Samuel Ross Martin the second."

Marcia's face crumpled into a scowl and a wrinkled nose, but Jan looked a little startled. "How do you know, Daddy?" she asked with surprising logic. "You can't see the baby."

"Don't argue with me, Jan Martin," Roy said sharply. "It's a boy, and that's all there is to it!"

"But Daddy…" Marcia and Jan both began at once.

Roy blew. "I said, _it's a boy!!"_ he thundered, whipped around and stalked away to the bedroom he and Carol shared. The girls looked shocked, and then they both began to cry. Carol gathered them close and soothed them, suddenly worried. It was her pregnancy with Jan all over again, suddenly.

"Mommy, Daddy was mean," Jan sniffled and hiccuped, trying to wipe her face on Carol's maternity shirt.

"He never yelled like that before," Marcia said tearfully, staring at Carol through eyes that were bigger than ever with a fear Carol had never seen in them before. "I thought he was gonna hit me and Jan."

Carol smoothed her hair and hoped her face didn't show that she herself had had the very same thought. "He won't hit you, honey," she said and glanced back into the bedroom. In a whisper she added, "I won't let him." She wasn't very strong physically; but she was a mother, and she was going to protect her girls and their unborn sibling from anything and everything she could—even if it was their own father.


	12. Chapter 12

**THE BEGINNING OF THE END**

After Roy's eruption, the atmosphere between him and Carol became strained and stayed that way. The girls sensed it, and Marcia's school performance began to suffer a bit; Jan became a clingy little girl who cried too easily and too often. When Marcia's kindergarten teacher brought the child's problems to Carol's attention, she had a long, gentle talk with Marcia, explaining that her father was feeling lonely right now in his family of females, and once the baby arrived things would be different. That much she knew for a fact; whether they got a boy or a girl, life in the Martin household was definitely going to change.

Three weeks after school let out for the summer, Carol was feeling wrung out and wishing for a break. It was an unusually hot day; the girls were fractious because of the heat, she herself was completely exhausted and dealing with ankles so swollen she thought the condition was permanent, and Roy had evinced very little sympathy for Carol's pregnancy-related problems. The baby was due shortly, and Carol had begun to wish it would hurry up and get here. Her one consolation was that, according to her doctor, she would probably give birth quite rapidly, since this was her third child.

Roy's Boy's Toy was in the shop for some reason, so Roy had taken the bus to his current plumbing job that day. It seemed to Carol that that car had been in the shop quite a bit for a vehicle that was only a few years old. Jack had kidded, "It's the old 'pay off the car' curse. Once it's fully paid for, it starts breaking down, and you might as well still be making payments on it for all the money you sink into it." She remembered Roy laughing, too loudly, and agreeing with a huge grin that had looked fake to Carol. She'd seen Mary shoot her a look, but the sisters hadn't had a chance to talk, and Carol had to admit she was glad this time. Roy was acting little different from the way he'd acted during her pregnancy with Jan, except perhaps as a matter of degree. He was no longer playful with the girls, as he'd been with Marcia while they were awaiting Jan's birth; and he barely acknowledged Carol's existence. They still shared a bed, but they never even spoke to each other; all they did there was sleep.

Finally Carol decided to splurge on ice-cream cones for herself and the girls. She rounded up Jan and Marcia, telling them, "How about some ice cream?" Both of them eagerly agreed to this, and soon they were stepping out of their apartment building into the intense heat of the day. Carol groaned softly to herself. The ice-cream shop was just a couple of blocks away, but with the high temperatures and her advanced pregnancy, it would seem more like a couple of miles.

She took a child's hand in each of hers and started along the sidewalk. Once they came out from behind the corner of the building to the tenants' parking lot, a hot breeze gusted against them, tangling the girls' hair and buffeting Carol. "I wish it would rain," said Marcia. "It's too hot."

"I know, honey," Carol murmured and glanced into the parking lot. And to her disbelief, there was Roy's Boy's Toy, parked in its usual place, but looking…strange. "What on earth…?" she muttered to herself, stopping and staring at it.

"Mommy, let's get our ice cream," Jan urged impatiently.

"What're you looking at, Mommy?" Marcia wanted to know.

"Your father's car," Carol said without thinking, so startled was she. "I thought it was being fixed."

Marcia and Jan fell silent then, and Carol led them along to get a closer look at the sports car sitting in the lot, gleaming brightly in the intense sun. As they drew closer, she realized why. It sported a lot more chrome than she remembered it having had before, and there were all sorts of odd modifications to it: fancy whitewall tires, huge tailfins, some sort of gaudy hood ornament, even a luggage rack on the roof. The interior was no less tricked out, with leather-upholstered seats, customized floor mats, and the clichéd fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Carol suspected there were other improvements under the hood that her knowledge of cars was too scant to cover. One thing was for sure, this car was definitely far more customized than it had been when Roy first bought it.

Carol began to shake her head slowly. As little as she knew about cars, she knew this much: all these improvements obviously cost a pretty penny. Their old Studebaker had gone neglected, and they were still jammed into a two-bedroom apartment, while Roy had been lavishing money on the sports car. _So this is where all his inheritance money went,_ she thought dully. The things Sam and Jean had bequeathed to Roy that he had insisted on selling in a yard sale…the sale of the house…even Sam's car had been sold. All that remained were the little things that Sam and Jean had willed to Marcia and Jan. _Roy must have really been laughing when he gave me that thousand dollars,_ she thought, her heart slowly turning to lead. _He must have had some ten times that much to play with, and look what he's doing with it all._

She took the girls for ice cream, since she had promised; but she'd lost all her enthusiasm for the little outing, and she was trying to think about what she should say to Roy, if anything. After a little while she began to recover from the shock of her discovery, and found herself thinking about their household account. Her secret savings was still in good shape; she had a healthy dose of horse sense about money, and nothing short of the direst emergency would make her touch that account. But both her name and Roy's were on the bank account they used for the regular household expenses, and that was where all the proceeds from Sam and Jean's estate had gone. How much of it was still there?

When the girls finished their ice cream, she took them back to the apartment building, but this time steered them toward the Studebaker sitting tiredly in its usual space. She needed to make a trip to the bank, and once she'd coaxed the balky old car to life, drove directly there with the girls in the back seat chattering at each other. After what she'd found, she had no doubts, no hesitancy, no compunction whatsoever about doing what she planned to do.

When her turn at the teller window came up, she identified herself and asked for the current balance in the account she and Roy shared. There was still around $4500 in it, but she was shocked at how much money Roy had evidently spent on his car. _Well,_ she thought grimly, _before he wastes any more of this…_ She looked at the teller and said, "I'd like to transfer one thousand dollars into another account, please."

"Certainly, Mrs. Martin," the teller said pleasantly and nodded. "May I have the account number?"

Carol gave her the information, and within a minute the teller told her the transfer was complete and quoted her the total in her secret savings. Carol smiled at last, thanked the woman and took Marcia and Jan back out to the car. She felt a little better now; she didn't think of this as stealing from Roy's inheritance at all, but providing for her children. That, after all, had been the true purpose of this account of hers right from the beginning. If Roy wasn't going to do it, then it was up to her.

Back at home, she turned on the living-room air conditioner Roy had presented the family at Christmas, back when he'd been in a much more generous mood and everyone had been feeling optimistic about the future, and settled herself down to watch a couple of soap operas while Marcia and Jan played with their dolls nearby. She didn't really see the programs, though; her primary attention was still on that money and what under the sun Roy could have done with it. By now she was sure the car couldn't have been the sole beneficiary of her husband's spendthrift ways. As much as those tailfins and that genuine leather upholstery undoubtedly cost, there was only so much you could do to a car before you'd done it all; and even leather and endless engine-part upgrades didn't drain six thousand dollars out of an account that fast. She knew the prices of most things. No, Roy had to be doing something else with that money, but who knew what?

She was prepared with stern questions when Roy walked in the door that evening, but his beaten, demolished stance and expression caught her off guard. "Roy, what's wrong?" she asked, alarmed.

He stared at her. "It's all over, Carol," he mumbled. "We're dead broke."

Carol swallowed back an automatic protest that they had plenty of money. "What are you talking about?"

"Hal," Roy said, his eyes flashing all of a sudden and his body going rigid with rage. "Hal, that traitorous thief, Hal cleaned out the business accounts and took off for Tahiti. Every last penny in the business accounts is gone. I'm back where I started, Carol, right back on square one."

Carol gaped at him, speechless. Her wordless response caught his attention and he nodded. "Just found out about it today. I guess he's been leading up to this for a while. I kept noticing stuff missing from the accounts. I confronted him about it yesterday and he denied everything, but then I get into work this morning and whaddaya know, there's a note on his desk. He cleaned us out, Carol. Just wiped us right off the map, that's what he did. I was trying to cover the losses with our money…"

"Oh, that's where it went," Carol blurted before she thought.

Roy straightened and stared at her, alert. "What?"

She hesitated, loath to bring it up now in the face of his business partner's theft and defection, but now the cat was out of the bag. "I…took the girls out for ice cream this afternoon and saw your car in the parking lot," she said finally. "Why did you tell me it was in the shop?"

"It _was_ in the shop," Roy said defensively. "I left the keys with Frank and he drove it back here for me before lunchtime. I was just getting a couple engine modifications done."

"Roy, the Studebaker needs repairs more than that thing needs a souped-up engine!" Carol exclaimed. "Every time I go out to take it somewhere, I wonder if it's going to start! I'm afraid of being stranded on the side of the freeway with the girls one of these days, and there you are decking out a car that doesn't even need anything more than regular maintenance!"

Roy's face darkened. "Carol, my parents left me that money," he said dangerously. "It's not up to you what I spend it on."

"Oh, it most certainly is," Carol lashed out. Out of nowhere it all surged up to the fore in one monstrous tidal wave of worry, fear, anger, outrage and disgust. "You seem to forget that you have a wife and two daughters to support, and a third child about to eat its share of expenses out of the budget too! Sam and Jean may have left you that money, but I'm quite sure they didn't mean for you to blow it all on crazy fixes to that car of yours, while you neglect the important things in your life! We could have moved into your parents' house and had a nice yard for the girls, but no—you had to sell it. We could have gotten rid of our old furniture and kept the things Sam and Jean had, but no—you had to sell that too. We could have replaced the Studebaker with Sam and Jean's car—but that had to go too!

"And then there's your attitude! Who do you think you are, Roy Martin, telling me I have to give you a son or I'm not adequate?" She saw the outraged astonishment shift his features, and instantly anticipated his protest. "Oh, maybe you never said it in so many words, but it was there all the time. Are you some kind of sexist jerk? All you want is sons, and daughters aren't good enough for you? What a lousy attitude that is! When is it going to sink into that foot-thick skull of yours that girls are just as good as boys, and that you as their father need to love them equally? I suppose if Marcia and Jan had been boys, you'd have been there providing for them without fail—just because they were boys! But since they're girls, apparently they don't deserve your love or support. Really, Roy, I'm fed up with your demands for a boy and your disdain of the girls you've got!"

"Yeah?" Roy yelled when she finally ran out of steam. "So that's how you feel, huh? Fine, Carol, just fine. In that case, why don't I solve all your problems for you right now and just walk out? You don't have any sympathy for me over what Hal did, that damn traitor, and now you're screaming at me about fixing my car, which we can afford just fine, thank you! And since when have I failed to provide for those girls in there, not to mention you? The lot of you chicks've got a roof over your heads, food to eat every day, clothes to wear, toys to play with. Hell, I even bought that air-conditioner for you, and now you've got the nerve to tell me I'm not providing for you? Where's your appreciation, huh, Carol? Where is it?"

"Out in the ether with all the money you spent on that car!" Carol shouted. "Fine, Roy, you want to walk out and absolve yourself of all the responsibilities you agreed to take on? Go right ahead and do it! Go ahead and quit!" She whirled away from him and tried to stanch the tears that abruptly rose up, but her emotions had control, and she couldn't stop them. Behind her she heard Roy slam the door.

After a long silence, a small voice squeaked, "Mommy?" Carol looked up and saw Marcia in the doorway, big blue eyes bigger than ever and swimming in tears; Jan clutched her sister's arm, looking terrified.

"I'm sorry, girls," Carol managed and then burst into tears. And at the same moment, a sharp pain gathered in her lower back and zipped around to her front, contracting around the baby within. Sobbing, Carol stumbled to the phone and called her parents' number from sheer instinct. "Mom," she wailed when Martha Tyler answered.

"Carol? Oh my God, honey, what's the matter?" Martha gasped.

"Roy left and I'm in labor," Carol got out and then broke down completely.

"Stay right where you are, honey, your father and I will be right there," Martha promised and hung up then and there. Carol had to make three stabs before she got her own receiver back on the hook, then sagged against the wall and bawled, barely aware of Marcia and Jan clinging to her legs and adding their frightened voices to her own.


	13. Chapter 13

**THREE VERY LOVELY GIRLS**

Carol's labor was fast indeed, and even though it had been suppertime when she'd had her first contraction, it was still shortly before midnight when she gave birth to her third daughter. When she heard the doctor's announcement that "It's a girl!" she wasn't actually surprised at all. If there had been anything Roy might have come back to her for, it would have been the news that he had a son at last. But it was a girl, and Carol wondered what was going to happen if and when Roy found out, if he had been truly serious about leaving her and his children in the first place.

The following morning she opened her eyes to find her sister sitting by her bedside, reading a magazine. Carol stirred in the bed, and Mary looked up, then smiled. "Hi, sis, how're you feeling?"

Carol thought about that—such a casual question. Finally she murmured, "I don't know."

Mary nodded understanding. "I'm sure, after the night you went through." After Carol had been brought to the hospital and Henry was in the lobby using the pay phone to call Jack at his apartment and Mary and Roger at their home, Martha had coaxed the whole story out of Carol, who had been relieved to finally tell someone everything. Obviously Martha had since informed Mary. "But hey, you've got a really sweet little girl waiting to meet you, you know? Marcia and Jan already know they have a baby sister, and all morning they've been asking what her name's going to be. And they have some ideas of their own."

Carol smiled faintly. "I bet they do. But I haven't really thought about it. We were going to name a boy after Roy's father, but I just didn't think about a girl's name for some reason."

"Well, let me know if you want some help—outside of Marcia and Jan, that is," Mary said, grinning. "Mom was encouraging them to talk about the names they thought would be nice. Marcia must have reeled off eight or ten different names, and when Mom asked where she got them all, she said they were her friends at school. She wanted to give the new baby every last one of her buddies' names." Carol giggled finally, and Mary went on, "Then there was Jan. She said that was too many names, but then she said she thinks you should call the baby Cadillac, after Dad's old car."

"Cadillac!?" exclaimed Carol and finally really did laugh. "Well, she's original, I have to give her that. Oh, I don't know. Maybe I need to think first."

"Think, nothing," Mary retorted a little forcefully. "You've done all the thinking you can stand to do for a while, Carol Ann Tyler Martin. I know what you need to do—you need to see the baby. I'll go flag down a nurse and have her bring her in."

A few minutes later Carol was cradling her newest child in her arms. The baby had a perfectly round face and a small, upturned nose. Mary leaned over and peered at her little niece, grinning foolishly. "Isn't she just the most adorable thing? I mean, Marcia and Jan were pretty when they were born, but this one's just plain _cute."_

Carol looked up at her with a teasing grin. "You're carrying on like this is _your_ baby."

Mary giggled. "Oh, I know, but there's something about her that just yanks right on my heartstrings. She's just got the funniest little ski-jump nose, don't you see it?" She tickled the infant's forehead gently. "Come on, sweetie-pie, wake up now, let's see those big beautiful baby blues, huh?"

The sleeping baby squirmed under her touch and finally, reluctantly, opened her eyes. They were a wonderful crystal-blue color, and Carol and Mary were enchanted. "Look at that," Mary marveled. "I sure hope she keeps that blue. That's utterly gorgeous."

"It is pretty," Carol agreed, as surprised as her sister. "I can't imagine who else in the family has eyes that color." She studied her third daughter's eyes, while the baby stared blindly back, and then suddenly said aloud, "Cindy."

"Cindy who? There's nobody in the family named Cindy that I know of," Mary said, confused.

Carol smiled. "There is now. She just looks like a Cindy to me. It floated into my head just now. I suppose officially she can be Cynthia, but I want to call her Cindy."

"What about a middle name?" Mary prompted.

"I'll think of that one later, I'm sure," Carol said. "Just now I want to get used to this one." She leaned down and smiled broadly at the infant. "Hi, Cindy, sweetheart, I'm your mommy."

By the time Henry and Martha Tyler came up to get a look at their newest granddaughter, the baby's full name was Cynthia Denise Martin. Carol's parents agreed that the baby did indeed look like a Cindy, "whatever a Cindy's supposed to look like," Henry put in.

"Henry," Martha scolded.

"Now you know, Dad," Carol said whimsically. "This little girl is what a Cindy's supposed to look like." Henry laughed, then rubbed a finger along baby Cindy's cheek for a moment.

"Well," said Martha, taking the chair that Mary had vacated earlier to take her turn keeping an eye on Jan and Marcia. "You've had quite a day and night there, honey. What do you want to do?"

Carol frowned a little. "Well," she began uncertainly, "I suppose someone should check to see if Roy's home…"

"I've called already, Kitty," Henry said, lowering himself onto the side of her hospital bed. "Nobody answers. Listen…did he decide to leave, or did you tell him to go?"

"A little of both," Carol admitted. "He threatened it first, though. I was so incensed at him and all the ridiculous things he's done ever since I got pregnant with Marcia…well, I guess I'd just had enough of it all. And after what happened with his crook of a business partner…"

"What was that?" Henry asked, and Carol explained what Roy had told her about Hal cleaning every last penny out of their shared business' bank accounts and skipping the country with it. "He said he was trying to make up for the losses with money from our own household account, and that was where the rest of the money went that he inherited from Sam and Jean. He did spend an awful lot on Roy's Boy's Toy, but I knew even with the most expensive things he could buy, that couldn't account for that much money." She gave a heavy sigh. "It's a good thing I did what I did yesterday afternoon."

"What's that, dear?" Martha asked.

"I was so upset with Roy for blowing all that money on his car when we could have replaced or repaired the Studebaker, I went right down to the bank and took out another thousand dollars, and put it in my secret savings account. You know," she said at her parents' blank looks, "the one Jack encouraged me to open when I had Marcia. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to need it. I doubt Roy's going to pay the hospital bills for this baby any more than he did for Jan or Marcia, especially once he finds out it's another girl."

"Huh," sniffed Martha, incensed. "If that's his attitude, then good riddance to him. These girls of yours deserve something better than a father who'd rather they were boys. There's not a thing in the world wrong with boys, but that man needs to learn that girls are every bit as worthy." She cleared her throat and then lowered her voice—whether consciously or not, Carol had no idea. "So…are you going to file for divorce? I know it's an ugly word, but…"

Carol recoiled from the term. "I don't know, Mom," she hedged uneasily. "Maybe there's a chance Roy and I can patch things up. Let's wait and see."

‡ ‡ ‡

Carol was in the hospital for four days after Cindy's birth, and in that entire time no one heard a word from Roy. He apparently had taken his threat to leave seriously, however; Carol gave her mother the key to the apartment so she could pack some things for Jan and Marcia to stay over at the Tylers' house, and when Martha came back she reported that Roy's clothes and other personal belongings were missing. "Did he leave anything at all?" Carol asked.

"I didn't look that hard," Martha said, "I just happened to see the closet door in your bedroom standing open, and I went to shut it and saw then that his clothes were gone. The old Studebaker is still sitting in the parking lot, but that Corvette of his is gone too. I'm sorry, honey."

Carol bit her lip, wondering what they were going to do now. She was probably going to have to get a job of some sort in order to provide for her girls, but with Cindy a newborn, she hated the idea. She resented being put in this position, and the worrier in her sent her on another trip to the bank as soon as she and Cindy were released from the hospital. Henry drove her there at her insistence on their way home, and accompanied her inside, carrying Cindy a little awkwardly.

Sure enough, Carol learned that the account she and Roy had shared was now closed out. It made her more relieved than ever that she'd taken out that thousand dollars when she had; she only wished she'd pulled out even more. Sighing, she told her father what she'd found out.

Henry nodded slowly, considering it. "Well," he said, "let's wait a little while. Your rent's paid through the end of this month, right?" Carol nodded, and he fingered his chin thoughtfully. "Let's sit it out and see if Roy gets in touch with you. If you haven't heard from him by the end of July, then we'll get together and decide what to do at that point. Now meanwhile, you just sit tight with the girls, and whatever bills come in, go ahead and pay them. If you need some help, your mother and I have some put aside, and we can give you a little assistance. Don't argue, Kitty, this isn't the time for you to get proud, okay?"

Carol subsided and smiled gratefully at him. "Thanks, Dad, you're the best."

And so the waiting began. Meantime Carol settled into her regular routine, altered wherever necessary to accommodate Cindy. To let Marcia and Jan get the sleep they needed at night, she kept Cindy in her own room with her, so that she had to take only a few steps to give Cindy a bottle, change her diaper or whatever else needed to be done. The baby thrived, which was one load off Carol's mind at least.

It was two weeks before they heard from Roy, and at that, it was indirectly. About ten days before the end of July, someone knocked on Carol's door, and she squinted through the peephole at a complete stranger, dressed in a three-piece suit. She was startled; she didn't know this guy, but she didn't suppose he was going to rob her. How many cat burglars wore a suit and tie to pull off their heists? But then again, you just never knew. Finally she called through the door, "Who is it?"

"I represent Attorney Harlan Mills," said the voice on the other side. "Are you Mrs. Carol Martin?"

_Oh, great,_ Carol thought and reluctantly opened the door, heart pounding with dread. "Yes, I'm Carol Martin. Can I help you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you," the man said politely. "But I have to give you these." He produced a manila envelope with a few sheets of paper sticking out of the top.

Slowly Carol took the envelope from his hand and peered cautiously at the top sheet. Sure enough, across the top was emblazoned PETITION FOR DIVORCE. She drew in a breath. So this was Roy's decision. She couldn't say she was surprised; in fact, a sneaky sense of relief trickled through her.

She looked up and nodded once. "Thank you," she said, her mind racing even as she spoke. This was totally new territory for her, and she was going to need her parents' help more than ever.

When Henry and Martha saw the papers that evening at the supper she cooked for them, herself and the two older girls, they looked at each other knowingly. "It's lucky Mary's not here," Henry remarked humorously. "She'd be tap-dancing to the tune of 'I told you so'."

"Henry!" Martha scolded as usual.

Carol chuckled resignedly. "I still remember the day of my wedding, when she asked if I was sure I really wanted to marry Roy. Maybe I should've listened, but then I wouldn't have Marcia, Jan and Cindy."

"That's true," Martha said. "For all his faults, that man did give you three beautiful little girls. Well, all right, now we know exactly where he stands. Have you read through the papers?"

Carol nodded. "I'm not very sure about all this legal gobbledygook, though. Dad, I was hoping you could recommend a good lawyer. With Roy's attitude toward the girls, I'll probably need one in order to get the alimony they deserve."

"No problem at all, Kitty," Henry said reassuringly, laying a hand over his daughter's. "You just leave everything to me, and we'll make sure you and the girls are well taken care of."


	14. Chapter 14

**CAROL ON HER OWN**

The divorce proceedings began to drag out. The sticking point was the child support; Roy had heard, through communication between his and Carol's respective lawyers, that his last child had been another girl, and was balking at the idea of supporting so many females. Carol paid the hospital bills for Cindy's birth from her own account, just as she had done with the other girls, and at Henry's suggestion paid rent for another month in their apartment. Roy had evidently rented a studio in another part of L.A., but he never contacted Carol directly and she didn't bother trying to contact him. Their lives were curiously peaceful without him around. Fortunately, by the end of August Roy's lawyer apparently convinced him it would look better for him if he started sending support checks, and Carol was gratified and very relieved to receive her first check for two hundred dollars. With it came a note from Roy's lawyer that she would be receiving this amount each month.

Marcia started first grade without incident and was as good a student as she had been in kindergarten; Jan, at three, was old enough to be very interested in helping Carol care for Cindy, and often imitated Carol's actions when "caring" for her baby dolls. She was a willing helper, toting diapers, bottles, clean baby clothes, blankets and whatever else Carol needed.

For Christmas Carol took her girls over to her parents' house and stayed with them for a couple of days. On Christmas Day itself, Mary and Roger brought Chrissy and Alan over, and Jack joined the family as well with his current girlfriend, Pauline Myers. They seemed quite serious, and Carol hoped Jack and Pauline would have a better relationship than she'd had with Roy.

The new year rolled in and Cindy was six months old; Marcia was a happy and popular first-grader, and Jan had begun displaying a penchant for drawing. At just three she was already producing the sort of stick figures that Marcia and her friends matter-of-factly drew in school, and Carol wondered if Jan might grow up to be an artist. She was sensitive enough for it, to be sure; Jan seemed the most insecure of the girls, and was the only one who asked Carol about Roy, though she didn't do so very often.

Then one chilly morning, just after Carol had returned from taking Marcia to school and was still in the process of taking off Jan's and Cindy's outerwear, there came a knock on the door. Carol, thinking back to the previous summer when she'd been served with the divorce papers, promptly assumed it had something to do with that, and headed for the door with Cindy in her arms. She did take a couple of seconds to squint through the peephole, and then looked again: this time her unexpected caller was a police officer. Startled and apprehensive, she opened the door. Cindy stared mesmerized at the stranger.

"Hello, officer," Carol said questioningly.

The policeman nodded and removed his cap; Cindy watched every move he made. Jan came to the door and stood behind Carol, clinging to her skirt and warily taking stock of the man. "Mrs. Carol Martin?" the policeman asked politely.

"Yes, I'm Carol Martin," she said. "Is something wrong?"

The man cleared his throat and glanced at Jan, then at Cindy, before drawing in a breath and saying in a carefully flat voice, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Martin…but I'm afraid your husband is dead."

Carol felt her mouth fall open, but she couldn't quite think of anything to say. "Roy?" she finally said.

"Yes, ma'am. It, uh…it happened about an hour ago." Carol realized suddenly that the policeman must be a rookie, or not far past it; he looked uncomfortable, and he clearly didn't have much experience delivering news like this. "My partner and I responded to a car wreck at approximately 7:40 AM. It seems…he was speeding, ma'am, on the freeway. He appears to have lost control of his car and collided head-on with a bridge abutment at very high speed."

_What was he doing?_ was Carol's first thought. "Was…anyone else involved?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, Mr. Martin was the only occupant of his car…a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette?" the policeman asked, and Carol blinked and nodded vaguely.

"Roy's Boy's Toy," she mumbled. "After all the money he spent on that car, and now…" She cleared her throat and met the policeman's slightly confused gaze. "No other cars were…I mean, he didn't hit anyone else when he…crashed?"

"No, ma'am, it was a one-car accident," the policeman assured her. "There's an autopsy scheduled…"

"To see if he'd been drinking," said Carol automatically, and then thought, _I must have been watching too many episodes of _Dragnet, _if I know that._ She shifted Cindy in her arms. "Did he…did they take him to the hospital?"

"Only to the morgue, ma'am, I'm sorry. He was already dead when we arrived—we suspect he was killed on impact." The policeman nervously readjusted his stance. "Is there anything we can do?"

Carol suddenly remembered something else and drew up straight with trepidation. "I don't have to…identify him, do I?"

"No, ma'am, his driver's license did that," the policeman said. Carol could see how tightly he clutched his cap, and felt sorry for him. Imagine having to deliver that kind of news on a regular basis!

She nodded. "I see, officer, thank you. Is there anything I have to do?"

"At the moment, ma'am, no. We'll contact you with the name of the funeral home that's handling the…the arrangements." The cop cleared his throat once more. "I'm very sorry, ma'am."

"Yes, thank you," Carol said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

When he was gone, she settled at the table in a daze. For the first time, Jan spoke. "Mommy, what does that mean, 'dead'?"

"It means…it means that Daddy's heart stopped beating, and his brain stopped working, and he stopped breathing," Carol tried to explain. "Forever. Daddy can never come back to see you or Marcia or Cindy." _He can also never pay child support,_ she thought out of the blue, and felt the first frissons of alarmed worry snake through her. Without Roy's support, there was no way she could raise her daughters without going back to work, and she still didn't like the idea of leaving Jan and Cindy with others.

Jan absorbed this information, and then frowned and looked at the baby. "He never saw Cindy," she said.

_Good Lord, she's right,_ Carol realized, shocked. "No," she murmured, "he sure didn't." She bit her lip, then finally thought of something to do. "I'd better call Grandma."

She dialed her parents' house and explained to Martha, without emotion, what she had learned. Martha was silent for quite a bit; then she said in astonishment, "Oh my. Oh my goodness."

"I'm…I'm going to have to get a job, Mom," Carol said with a heavy sigh. She didn't have much choice, not if she wanted to provide for her girls. "And then I'll have to find someone who can watch Jan and Cindy, and Marcia when she gets home from school…"

"Carol, Carol, slow down," Martha broke in. "I know you don't want to put the girls through that sort of thing, and I don't think you should have to, certainly not while Cindy's a baby. Look, dear, why don't you bring Jan and Cindy over here, and we'll get your father and sit down and discuss the problem."

"I'll do that, Mom, thanks," Carol said, relieved. She told Jan to get her sweater again, and pulled the little pink faux-fur jacket that had once belonged to Marcia back onto Cindy. _Please let the Studebaker start,_ she thought as she always did, settling Cindy on one arm and guiding Jan out the door with the other.

Martha had clearly spread the news: Mary was there with her children when Carol arrived. Chrissy, Jan and Alan promptly occupied themselves in the living room trying to make Cindy laugh by pulling faces at her, while Martha, Mary and Carol settled around the kitchen table with mugs of coffee. "Where's Dad?" Carol asked.

"He made a trip down to the hardware store," Martha explained, "he should be back shortly. So. My goodness, Carol, what a shock."

"Yeah," Carol said with a soft sigh.

"You seem awfully composed for a bereaved widow," Mary remarked, with hesitant amusement.

Carol looked up and shrugged, half-smiling at her sister. "I'm not sure I'm all that bereaved, Mary," she admitted. "After all, Roy and I were in the middle of getting divorced, and it wasn't exactly going smoothly. That lawyer must have been pulling sparrows' teeth when he got Roy to send us a check every month. Obviously that's not going to be coming in anymore. And Jan said it all a while ago—Roy never once set eyes on Cindy."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Martha in disgust, and Mary snorted and muttered a word that made Martha give her a stern look and Carol blink in surprise. "Mary," Martha admonished.

"Sorry, Mom, but that's just so typically Roy," Mary said, rolling her eyes. "I bet if Cindy had been a boy, he'd have beaten down everything in sight to get back to Carol and the kids. I wonder if he bothered to do right by you and leave you anything."

"I don't think it matters," Carol said dully. "I'm going to have to look for a job, or else the girls and I will be out on the street before spring. My savings aren't holding out too well—Roy didn't send very much, only two hundred a month. And I know I can qualify as a secretary, only I'm not very sure whether anyone will hire me. I married Roy right out of college and I've never actually had a job."

Mary and Martha looked at each other. "Well," Mary said slowly, "I know Roger's firm is hiring. You could try there, if you want."

Carol smiled finally. "Thanks, sis," she said.

"Well, while you're doing that…" Martha began, and at that point they heard the front door open. "Oh good, Henry's home. Let's fill him in."

Henry listened to the whole story with amazement initially, then a thoughtful look. "Well, well," he mused at length. "Nice mess Roy left you in, Kitty, huh?"

"That's for sure, Dad," Carol murmured, and to her surprise she heard her voice wobble. Henry came right over to the table and took Carol's hand as she got out of her chair, and then held her and patted her back as she cried, just as he had when she was a little girl.


	15. Chapter 15

**SECURITY**

Carol spent every day of the next three months making the rounds, trying to get a secretarial position; but she had no success at all. Prospective employers looked at her very short résumé and then, doubtfully, at her. "Why haven't you ever held a job?" most would ask, and she then had to explain that she had been married the last several years and was raising three daughters. And then the question, "Why do you want a job now?" would come, which meant she had to tell them she'd just been widowed. She left out the part about the interrupted divorce proceedings; that wasn't really relevant.

She got sympathy from everyone, but none ever asked her for a second interview, much less hired her. By spring when Jan's birthday was coming up, she had gone everywhere she could think of to go, including her brother-in-law's company, which had treated her just the way everyone else had done. She was so discouraged that she couldn't hide it from anyone, and she found herself getting short with the girls, even Cindy, who was much too young to know when and why her mother was agitated. She turned into a fussy baby, and Marcia began to have some social problems at school; Jan simply withdrew into herself.

Henry and Martha had had enough of their daughter's pride by now. They'd tried to help her, but she kept insisting none of this was their responsibility. And they'd stood by watching her situation grow more and more desperate while she tried to keep herself solvent out of her rapidly dwindling savings. Roy had left nothing behind except the funeral costs, which Henry and Martha had insisted on paying so that Carol could keep meeting her living expenses. Just once Carol had seen the twisted metal wreckage that had once been Roy's beloved car, and had been so stunned by the sight that she couldn't shake the mental image for days afterward. That, above all else, made it plain to her that Roy could never have survived the wreck.

Martha and Henry finally cooked up a plan between them and got Carol to bring the girls over for dinner one evening. After Marcia and Jan had eaten their fill and were watching television in the living room, Carol settled back to give Cindy her bottle, and Henry helped himself to another mugful of coffee while Martha began clearing the table. Eventually Cindy finished the bottle and Carol went to put her down for the night; when she got back, Martha too had a cup of coffee, and there was one waiting for her. She thanked her mother and settled down, more than ready to relax.

Then Henry said straight out, "Carol, I think it's time you listened to your mother and me. We've been watching all your troubles since Roy died, and we've come to a decision. Seems pretty obvious to me that none of those thickheaded executives out there wants to hire a widowed lady with three little girls to support. Am I right?"

"Yes," said Carol warily, eyeing him.

"What's left in your savings, dear?" Martha asked.

Carol winced. "Barely enough to cover next month's rent—and that's due next week."

"Good gravy," said Henry, shaking his head. "This nonsense has got to stop. Listen to me, Kitty, and don't say a word till I've finished. And if your mother has something to say, you'll let her have her chance, too. You have no income, nobody's hiring you for their own foolish reasons, and your money's running out. It's pretty bleak. Now your mother and I have talked this over, and we're not about to see our daughter and our grandchildren out on the streets when we have plenty of room right here in this house. I know you don't like the idea of farming the kids out to strangers while you're trying to make enough money to support them. So what we're saying here is, start packing. You and those girls are moving in here with us. You can have your old room again, and we'll fix up Mary's old room for the kids."

Carol gaped at him, astonished. Henry's point-blank monologue had caught her completely by surprise, and she couldn't think of a suitable response. Worse, she had no legitimate protest. She didn't find the prospect of charity—even parental charity—too appealing, but her father was right: she had no other choice. She blinked, thinking that at least it would give her a breather while she was looking for a job. Maybe once she was employed and had some money set aside, she could move back out again and take the burden off her parents. After all, they were looking to support four extra souls, and since she knew she was perfectly capable of caring for her daughters, she didn't want to mooch off them.

"Well, dear?" Martha prompted. "You might as well make it official and accept."

Carol sighed. "Well, all right. I'll do it. But you need to understand that it's temporary, till I can get a good enough job and enough money saved to get back on my own two feet."

Henry snorted, "Hogwash. What's family for, Carol Ann? I've got a good pension, the house is paid for, we're not hurting. You need help, and we can give it to you."

"Carol, if you don't do it for yourself, do it for Marcia, Jan and Cindy," Martha put in.

That was enough to sway her completely; she couldn't bear the idea of seeing her little girls on the streets. "Okay, we'll start packing," she agreed quietly. "I guess I'd better see if I can sell some things, too. Most of our furniture's awfully old…"

"It won't sell," Martha said, shaking her head. "Keep what you need for the girls, their beds and clothes and toys and so on, and the essentials for yourself. The rest of it can be donated if it's still usable, or thrown out if it's not. We'll start tomorrow, and Jack and Mary and Roger can help."

Carol notified the landlord that she was moving out, and started scrounging up boxes from anywhere she could get them. She was more than a little surprised to find out just how much stuff she and Roy and the girls had accumulated in their years in this apartment. There were all sorts of kitchen items—plates, glassware, silverware, pots and pans, baking utensils, towels, potholders and more—that Carol wound up boxing for storage. The same was true of the personal library she and Roy had collected; there were books all over the apartment. Jack willingly took some of the car-care and other automotive books Roy had left behind when he'd walked out, but it was Carol who had been the more avid reader of the two and she found herself boxing up dozens of books—not only her own but Marcia's as well. There were any number of sentimental things she discovered she wanted to keep but couldn't find a place for in her parents' house, and had to box them up too.

As to the furniture, Carol kept the two single beds in which Marcia and Jan slept; Cindy's crib, changing table and high chair; the double bed she had shared with Roy; and the dresser and chest of drawers that held the girls' clothes. She also kept the old TV set she and Roy had started out their marriage with, as well as the squat, sturdy wooden table it sat on. All the rest she donated to charity, except for the sagging old sofa and chair which got relegated to the dump. With the help of her parents, her sister and brother, her brother-in-law, and even Jack's girlfriend, plus some assistance from Marcia and a little haphazard, if well-meaning, help from Jan, they finally got everything together and hauled over to Henry and Martha's house. Roger and Mary lined up a storage-unit rental for Carol to keep the items there was no room for in her parents' house, and by the end of the month they were settling down in the Tylers' large house on a quiet residential street, the house where Carol herself had lived since she was ten years old and her family had come out from Massachusetts.

Henry and Carol worked together to dismantle the single bed in Carol's childhood room and put it back together in the room that Marcia, Jan and Cindy would now be sharing. When Cindy was old enough, she would sleep in Carol's old bed. Carol rearranged the furniture in her old room and began to settle back in, feeling at home yet out of her element all at once. It was something of a relief, she had to admit, to leave behind that increasingly cramped apartment, where the cracks in the walls had begun to defy the patches Roy had made years before and everything looked more shabby with each passing month. This was a better neighborhood, the sort of place where she'd once envisioned her daughters having the chance to grow up. It meant Marcia would have to change schools, but for Jan and Cindy the move was exciting.

There were still two and a half months left of school when Carol brought Marcia in to the same elementary school she herself had attended, to register the little girl. Marcia hadn't been too happy about starting in a new school. "I wish we'd stayed in my old school till summer," she said.

"They wouldn't have allowed that, sweetheart," Carol said. "When you move to a new place, you have to go to the school that's closest to your new home. And this is it. Why, I went to school here myself, a long time ago."

"I bet all the teachers here must be real, real old, then," Marcia mused.

Carol laughed. "Not all the same teachers are here that I had back then. But who knows, there might be one or two still teaching here—they might even remember me. Come on, let's see which first-grade class you'll be in."

The principal liked the transcripts from Marcia's city school, and looked at the child, impressed. "You're a very good student, young lady," he remarked. "I think you're going to do just fine in our school. I think the first-graders are going on a field trip to the zoo soon, and you're just in time for that."

"The zoo?" Marcia blurted, delighted. "Mommy, can I go too?"

"I don't see why not," said Carol, glad to see Marcia's enthusiasm. "Will her teacher have the information?"

"She certainly will," said the principal. "Let's see, why don't we put Marcia in Miss Selmer's room. She has the smallest first-grade class, so there should be a few extra desks that Marcia can choose from."

The principal walked Carol and Marcia down to Marcia's new classroom, and brought Miss Selmer out to talk with them a few minutes. The teacher was quite young, probably at least as young as Carol had been when she married Roy; but she was a cheerful woman who loved children and knew how to make sure they did their best in school and kept the misbehavior down to a minimum. "I know just where you can sit. There's an empty desk near some very nice little girls named Patty, Angela and Cheryl, and you'll have a chance to make some new friends."

Marcia nodded. "That sounds like fun. I just wish my best friend Paula could've come to this school too."

Miss Selmer smiled. "I know you must miss your old friends, and maybe you'll get to see them again sometimes. But you can have some new friends too—you don't have to give up your old friends to have new ones. Let me show you where you'll be sitting."

Carol returned home with a sense of relief about Marcia. Her transition should be relatively painless. If all this had to happen, she thought, at least it had happened while her daughters were still young and resilient. She had about all she could do to face the changes she had undergone this year. Her parents had told her that, if she still couldn't find a job by the time school was out for the summer, she should simply stop worrying about it. "You can take care of the household chores for us, if you truly want something to keep you busy," Martha said. "My old bones are getting a little achy and I could certainly use the help."

Carol thought about it. "That should be nice," she agreed. "And don't worry about Jan and Cindy, Mom, I'll be taking care of them just like always, and you won't have to do anything."

"I will if I like," Martha said with mock bellicosity, and Carol laughed. Things were looking much better, and she had a more positive outlook for herself as well. Now all she had to do was make some friends, maybe the mothers of some of Marcia's future new school friends, and she'd feel as if she belonged.


	16. Chapter 16

**ADJUSTMENTS**

Carol never did find anyone willing to hire her for enough money to give her some hope of getting back out on her own with her daughters, and Martha advised her not to worry about it. "They need you right now," was her rationale. "They've been through a lot in the last year, what with a new baby, Roy walking out on you, his death, and your move in with us. Just settle down and be their mother for right now, all right? Besides, Cindy in particular needs you—she's just a baby. They all need a good stable environment right now. I don't think they should have to endure any more changes."

Carol agreed, a little reluctantly, and settled into a pattern. School let out for the summer and Marcia found playmates right in the neighborhood; Carol, looking to make some friends, started venturing out on walks with Cindy in the baby carriage and Jan skipping happily alongside. Usually on these outings Marcia was already with her friends, but sometimes she too would accompany them, amusing Cindy with a stuffed animal or some plastic keys on a ring. It wasn't long before Carol came across other mothers in their yards playing with their kids, and pretty soon Carol knew most of the mothers in the neighborhood.

And so the summer passed. They celebrated Cindy's first birthday; then Marcia started second grade, and Carol began having regular lunchtime meetings with some of her closest friends in the neighborhood, talking over coffee about everything—the latest books and movies, what the state and national government was doing to improve or impede their lives, bargains at the local supermarkets and on clothes for themselves and their kids, how the kids were doing in school, ideas they had for redecorating or putting in flower beds. And of course, there was the usual gossip about absent women and, often, one another's husbands. Carol desisted from this last, feeling vaguely uncomfortable every time the topic came up and wondering for the first time whether she herself might ever get married again someday.

Nobody came right out and asked her how she happened to be single, living with her parents along with three young daughters; but she knew her friends were curious, and Marcia had reported that some of her own new friends had asked her about her absent father. It was a good while before Carol, a fairly open and talkative woman, felt close enough to anyone to volunteer the backstory, but even then she didn't say anything, just waited for someone to ask.

It was approaching Christmastime when it finally happened. The talk at the weekly kaffeeklatsch revolved around Christmas decorating, which was one of Carol's favorite things to do. Every year she looked eagerly forward to Christmas, and she'd always maintained that half the fun of the holiday was decorating for it. "So how early do you start?" someone asked, and the answers came, some laughing, some serious: the first day of December, the day after Thanksgiving, the week before Christmas, Christmas Eve. One woman whose birthday was in December said she always started decorating the day after her birthday.

"What about you, Carol?" someone asked.

She grinned. "I start as soon as the dishes are washed and the turkey leftovers stashed away on Thanksgiving Day." Everyone laughed, and she went on, "I must've driven my parents crazy when I was growing up—I could never wait to get the Christmas tree up and all the lights and decorations on it. It was the same when I was married."

"I'll bet the poor man had plenty to say about starting so soon," somebody joked.

"He did," Carol admitted, sighing. "He could never understand why I had to do it the moment we'd finished clearing off the table from Thanksgiving dinner. He said he and his parents used to wait till about the middle of December and do it then."

"Scrooge," murmured someone jokingly.

"Sometimes," Carol agreed, sighing. Since Roy's departure and death, she had thought a lot about how things had been in their marriage, how they'd deteriorated as each successive daughter was born, how even his own parents seemed to be at a loss as to what made their son tick. And since Sam and Jean had predeceased Roy, there was no way to even speculate as to what had made him do what he'd done, especially the day he'd died. The autopsy had seemed to raise more questions than it answered; Roy hadn't been drinking, and there had been no obvious signs of a mental condition that might have intervened at the fateful moment. The only clue to anything had been the discovery of a small plastic cup with a logo that turned out to be that of a Las Vegas casino; apparently Roy had been on his way back to L.A. from some sort of gambling trip. But what would have made him do that? Carol supposed it had been just another little habit he must have developed since leaving her and the girls, and she further imagined he might have driven straight through the night to get back home. In that case his accident would have been logically attributable to fatigue. The police had evidently come to a similar conclusion; they had closed out the case in late spring, and Carol was left with memories and amateur self-analysis.

"If you don't mind our asking, Carol," said Joanne Ross, who lived next door to the Tylers and had a daughter Jan's age, "what happened to your husband?"

"It's all right," said Carol. "His name was Roy, and he walked out on us right before my daughter Cindy was born. He was killed in a car accident back in January."

Surprised murmurs and expressions of sympathy filtered back to her, and Joanne blinked. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm sure Jan and Marcia miss him."

"Mostly Marcia, I think, but even she's adjusting. Roy never even saw Cindy." She turned to Joanne as conversations resumed around them, glad that she wasn't making a speech for the entire group. "He actually left on the same night she was born. We had quite an argument about the money he'd been spending on his sports car." She sighed while Joanne watched sympathetically. "He always wished we'd have a boy, and every time we had a girl he got more and more upset. Someone somewhere must have told him Cindy was a girl, or else I think if she'd been a boy, he'd have come back. He wouldn't have missed being father to a boy for all the tea in China."

"So he never saw Cindy at all?" Joanne asked, amazed. Carol shook her head, and Joanne patted her arm. "That's got to be really hard. I'm so sorry. I imagine you miss him too."

Joanne's final remark stuck in Carol's head for days after that, even as she was helping Martha put electric candles in the windows, hanging wreaths, displaying Marcia's red-and-green construction-paper chain in the front window of the house, and helping bring boxes of ornaments down from the attic. Did she miss Roy? The more she thought about it, the more she considered how his attitude toward her and the girls had steadily deteriorated through time, the more she understood that she, Marcia, Jan and Cindy were better off without him. And she came to realize, too, that the only thing she truly missed about Roy was his monetary support. Sure, she'd been in love with him once; but that seemed like a misty old dream now. She'd been so naïve the day they were married, filled with dreams of a happy household and laughing children.

But she did have laughing children. Her girls were happy little tykes, there was no questioning that. They all seemed to be doing quite well for being fatherless; Marcia was popular in school, had a lot of friends, and was doing well academically. Her teacher had said that she enjoyed having Marcia in her class. Jan, the most introverted of the girls as far as Carol could ascertain, was nonetheless doing well too. She still drew every chance she got, whenever Martha had some paper to spare and got her the crayons out of their usual storage place. Otherwise she was happy to go out and play with Julie Ross next door, or a couple of other little girls whose mothers lived close by and had daughters around Jan's age as well. And Cindy was a gregarious toddler, with a ready grin for everyone, family and strangers alike.

So time drifted by, and Carol watched her girls grow older, developing their own distinct personalities. The first anniversary of Roy's death passed without much mention from anyone; Carol was in a quiet mood all day, but she didn't notice much change in the girls' demeanor. Cindy wouldn't remember, of course, and Jan at nearly five wasn't too likely to recall that this was the day her father had died. She still asked once in a blue moon where he was, but always seemed satisfied with Carol's simple, "He's dead now, honey."

But Marcia did remember her father; and what was more, she remembered him in happier times. She would be eight in a few months, and she was a smart cookie. As Carol was getting ready for bed that evening, Marcia tentatively poked her head in the door. "Mom? Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, honey, come on in," Carol said.

Marcia slipped inside the room and closed the door. "Daddy's been gone a whole year," she said, pausing at the end of Carol's bed and tracing a finger over the wooden knob that decorated one side of the footboard.

Carol looked around with some surprise, then nodded slowly. "Yes, that's right."

"Do you ever miss him?" Marcia asked, with saucer-shaped eyes and a faintly anxious expression. "I mean, do you ever wish he hadn't died and he'd come back to us and got to see Cindy?"

Carol sighed softly. "I do wish that," she admitted, "but…maybe not as much as I used to." She saw Marcia's astonished look. "Well, there's no use wishing. What's done is done, and we have to live with that. Mostly, sweetheart, I just feel sorry for him because he didn't understand what he had, and made the choice to throw it all away."

"Why did he do that?" Marcia asked.

Carol bit her lip. She didn't want to sully the child's memories of her father, but she wasn't willing to lie for the sake of sparing the integrity of Roy's memory. After all, she herself had resented the man plenty during the last couple years they'd been together. Finally she shrugged to herself and admitted baldly, "Because he wished we could have had a boy."

"I remember that, when we were waiting for Cindy to be born, and me and Jan wanted another sister and he wanted a brother." Marcia scowled. "And I 'specially remember when he yelled at us that time that it was a boy and wouldn't even listen to us anymore." She looked up, still frowning. "Does that mean he was mad because me and Jan were girls too?"

" 'Jan and I'," Carol automatically corrected before catching herself and thinking about it. "Yes, honey, I'm afraid so."

"What's so great about boys?" Marcia demanded.

Carol laughed. "Someday you'll find out for yourself," she promised teasingly, and laughed again at the face Marcia made before growing serious. "It's just the way some men are. Some men, like your father, just think that sons are better than daughters. I guess your dad was looking forward to teaching a boy how to play baseball, and how cars work, and things like that that boys enjoy. Fathers like to have sons, and I guess that's partly because they'll carry on the family name."

"What's that mean?" asked Marcia.

"It means that when they get married and have kids, the kids will have the same last name. Before I married your father, my name was Tyler, like Grandma and Grandpa's name. After I got married, I became Mrs. Martin, and that's why you and your sisters are named Marcia Martin and Jan Martin and Cindy Martin. But someday you girls will get married too, and you'll all change your names to whatever your husband's last name is. You see? Boys don't do that, and I think men like that."

"Then all I have to do is just not get married," Marcia decided. "That would've made Daddy happy, I bet. I could have had kids and they'd all be called Somebody Martin."

Carol grinned. "I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way." She saw Marcia gearing up to ask questions, and raised one hand. "Never mind about that right now. Anyway, Daddy wanted boys and not girls, and it made me sad. He didn't seem to be interested in the things girls like to do. It made me sad, because I knew he'd be very happy to be daddy to the three best little girls in the world."

Marcia giggled, and Carol felt better. "Well, I bet Daddy's sorry now, wherever he is. Girls are just as good as boys. Sometimes they're even better. I beat out every boy in my whole class in our spelling bee last week, so that's one way we're better."

"Yes, boys are very good at some things, and girls are very good at some things. But sometimes boys and girls are equally as good at the same things, so don't forget that. That's one thing your father didn't seem to understand, and I want to make sure you and your sisters do."

"I understand fine, Mom." Marcia paused a moment, while Carol let herself hope she'd satisfied her daughter's curiosity, and then asked, "Mom, do you think you'll ever get married again?"

Carol blinked, quite startled. "I don't know, honey," she admitted. "Maybe someday I will, but I haven't met any men who aren't already married. And besides, I don't think I'm quite ready for that just yet. But if I ever do meet someone, you and Jan and Cindy will be the first ones to know."

"Just make sure he's got girls," said Marcia firmly. "If he's got only boys, he'll probably think boys are better than girls the same way Daddy did." Having issued this edict, she leaned over and kissed Carol's cheek. "'Night, Mom."

"Good night, sweetheart," said Carol and watched her leave. She was laughing to herself a moment later, despite the vague sensation of uneasiness in her stomach. It mattered little to her whether a prospective future husband had sons, daughters, both, or none at all. The main question was about as simple as they came: where in heck was she supposed to meet single men at all?


	17. Chapter 17

**THE IRISHMAN AND THE SINGLE MOM**

Carol had reason to remember her conversation with Marcia, quite out of the blue, long after Marcia had started third grade. She was driving Marcia to school, something she rarely did since they lived close enough for Marcia to walk; but Carol wanted to do some food shopping for her mother, who had a long list of things she needed. She pulled into the school drive, inched along with the other cars while Marcia gathered her lunch bag and sweater and searched through the window for any of her friends, and watched the cars ahead of her discharging children. Finally her turn came up and a safety monitor opened the door so Marcia could jump out. "Bye, Mom," Marcia called without looking back, already sprinting off to her third-grade class before Carol could tell her to have a good day.

"Such a hurry," Carol murmured and chuckled to herself, pulling around to the exit lane so she could get back on the road. A traffic policeman held her up, waving a group of children across the street, and she found herself looking curiously at the cop. He was quite tall with broad shoulders and a trim torso, and under his cap she could see a shock of red hair. She was so busy studying the man that she didn't register his "go ahead" motion when the children had crossed the road, and just sat there wondering why she had never seen him before. Not that she'd driven Marcia to school all that often, but she knew for a fact that she'd have remembered a red-haired cop.

Then a horn honked impatiently behind her and she started, blinking in sudden embarrassment. "Sorry," she mumbled and sent the car ahead, glancing sheepishly at the traffic cop before she turned onto the street and he was lost to her view. As she drove, she cast one last fruitless look into the rearview mirror, trying to verify something. She could have sworn that cop was laughing.

She did her shopping pretty much on automatic pilot, all the while thinking about that policeman. Was he new? Had he been there before, maybe, on some day when Marcia had walked to school? It crossed her mind to ask Marcia about it, but then she nixed it; Marcia probably wouldn't pay attention to the various adults who came and went, other than her teachers and perhaps the parents of her closest friends. Well, maybe she'd be lucky and he'd still be there when she drove past the school on her way home…

He was still there, but clearly about to leave, since the opening bell for school had rung some time ago and even the stragglers were all in the building now. She slowed the old Studebaker on an impulse she could never have explained, and pulled into the empty spot beside the patrol car the traffic cop was just about to get into. He saw her coming and froze to watch her park beside him.

The moment she killed the engine, she wondered what she was doing. What crazy impulse had taken over her brain like that? What was she going to say to this guy? All Carol knew was that she wanted to say _something_ to him, whatever it might be. She slowly opened her car door and stepped out, and then inspiration hit her. Smiling apologetically, she said, "I'm sorry I held up traffic earlier."

The cop's cheerful, handsome face relaxed into a broad grin; his blue eyes twinkled at her. "Aye, I recognize that old beater ye're drivin'," he remarked in a brogue that melted Carol's knees into slush. "Ye really didn't need to stop and apologize, but 'tis nice that ye did."

"I just thought it might be…polite," Carol said, and then began to feel supremely silly. "Well…thanks for your time, officer." She started to duck back into the car.

"Now wait a moment," he said, and she paused, staring apprehensively at him over the roof of the car. "No, ye've not done anything wrong. I only thought that, seein' as ye took the time an' trouble to tender yer apologies for a minor mishap, I'd like to know the name of the lovely lady I'm speakin' with."

She was sure she had to be blushing worse than a high-school girl. "Carol Martin."

"Aye, Mrs. Martin, and I am Thomas Patrick O'Malley, at yer service." He swept off his cap and presented her with a shallow bow, which astonished her but delighted her on some level too. "I wish ye a good day."

"And you too," Carol said, smiling, yet a touch disappointed.

Then O'Malley paused again and peered at her. "If ye don't mind me askin', Mrs. Martin…d'ye an' yer husband live nearby?"

"I do," said Carol, "but there's no husband. He's dead."

Something in O'Malley's face seemed to brighten. "Aye," he murmured. He looked up and raised his voice. "I asked, ye see, only because I haven't seen ye round here afore."

"Usually my daughter walks to school," Carol explained. "I drove her today because I was doing some grocery shopping for my mother. We live with my parents."

"Aye," said O'Malley again. "Hmm…well, I meself am new to the area. Ye're the first one I've met, outside o' the police force anyhow. An' now…if ye don't mind me bein' a wee bit forward here…I'm wonderin' if ye might be interested in dinner out, very soon."

"Why…I'd love to," Carol exclaimed, astonished. How lucky could she get? Not only was the man single, he was interested in her! "Just let me know when."

"Might I have yer number?" he inquired, with the utmost politeness. "I'll ring ye and let ye know."

She scrabbled madly through her purse for something to write on, finally found the scratch pad that Martha had written her shopping list on, and hurriedly wrote down her parents' phone number. "Just ask for Carol," she said, handing him the slip over the roof of her car. "I'll let my parents know I've met you so that they don't start wondering."

O'Malley laughed. "If ye can't trust a policeman, lass, then tell me, who can ye trust? Aye, I'll ring ye very soon, I promise ye that." He touched a hand to the brim of his cap, and Carol smiled back and settled back into the car. She hadn't felt this excited since the day she'd discovered she was pregnant with Marcia, when she'd last sensed a wonderful and earth-shaking change in her life. She hoped it wouldn't be long before he called.

‡ ‡ ‡

He called her within the week, set up a dinner date for the next evening, and took her out while Henry pretended to be reading the newspaper and Martha hid upstairs with the girls. Carol had little doubt that they were watching through slats in the window blinds as O'Malley's car drove away down the street.

Their dinner was very pleasant, at a nice restaurant that wasn't too expensive but had good food and a quiet atmosphere, and spent the whole meal getting to know each other. He urged from the start that she call him Tom, and told her that he was the oldest of eight children who had scattered all over the British Isles. "I wanted adventure," he said, "so I came here to America. 'Tis somethin' to behold, right enough."

Adventure! Carol couldn't imagine such a thing; mostly, her adventures had been through the many books she read. She had to be a practical, no-nonsense mother, after all. But something about Tom O'Malley made her feel as if anything were possible, even with three children in tow. She told him about Marcia, Jan and Cindy, about Roy and his none-too-subtle wish for a son that he never got, and how he'd walked out on her the night Cindy was born and then later died. Tom shook his head with sympathy and reached across the table to cover her hand with his. "I'm very sorry, Carol lass," he said gently. "I hope ye're all gettin' along better since then."

"I think we are," said Carol, feeling as if everything on earth were right just so long as she was with this captivating man. "But I guess I was more ready than I knew to meet someone new."

He smiled at that. "I'm glad, Carol lass, that I am."

From that beginning, they were soon dating several nights a week. They never seemed to run out of things to talk about; he was always relating anecdotes from his job, while she found herself armed with all manner of funny antics by her daughters to tell him about. By the time they'd known each other a month, he had met her parents and her daughters, been warmly accepted by all of them, and had somehow managed to enchant Carol to the point that she had fallen madly in love with him.

One evening they were invited to a party given by a friend of Tom's on the force, and Carol was mentally going through her wardrobe when Tom suddenly said, "If ye would, Carol lass, please wear somethin' green, will ye? I'm thinkin' ye'd look smashin' in green."

Flattered, Carol agreed; and after some searching through her closet revealed the fact that she didn't own a green dress, she told her mother about it, which prompted Martha to suggest a shopping trip. "I think you could use it, dear," she said. "You haven't bought anything for yourself since you and the girls moved in here. Let's leave Jan and Cindy with your father, and you and I'll go into town and look around for something nice in green."

They did find a very pretty green dress, and when Tom saw Carol in it that same evening, he was delighted. He called her a "regular Irish colleen" and refused to leave her side all evening; at the door, he kissed her good night. It was no mere peck on the cheek or brief meeting of lips, either; he kissed with a skill and gentleness that left Carol's head awhirl. It also left her wanting more, but she kept quiet about that; that was for some time in the future. But it was very difficult for her to say good night to Tom and watch him walk back across the lawn to his car.

After that, he kissed her the same way at the end of every date. Summertime arrived, and they began taking Marcia, Jan and Cindy along with them to the various places they went on Tom's days off. The girls liked him very much, and Carol was nuts about him. Tom was clearly very happy with them as well; he had readily admitted to being in love with Carol too, and she felt as if there was hope in her life at last. She didn't even mind his requesting that she wear nothing but green clothing wherever she went; he himself wore it just about all the time as well, so she didn't think anything of it. There were times when she found herself longingly eyeing her other clothing in red, yellow, blue, or just plain white; but she loved Tom, and she felt wearing exclusively green was a small price to pay. He treated her like a queen, and he never asked anything more of her than that she wear green.

When he proposed, not too long after Cindy's third birthday, Carol accepted, overjoyed. Marcia, now nine, and Jan, six, jumped up and down and clapped when she told them they would soon be getting a new stepfather. Even Cindy seemed happy. "Nice Daddy!" she often said of Tom, who thought it was the most flattering compliment any child had ever given him.

They started making wedding plans, and that startled Martha and Henry. "For Pete's sake, Kitty, you've known him less than a year," Henry said, amazed. "Now already you're planning to marry him?"

"Henry!" Martha scolded. "When it's right, it's right, and Carol knows that perfectly well. And you can tell by her face that it's definitely right. She and Tom look so good together." She sized Carol up while Henry looked on, shaking his head. "Hmm, dear, why don't we get you a nice dress in blue? It'd bring out your eyes, and you'll look just lovely going up the aisle to meet Tom."

But when Carol told Tom of her mother's idea, he looked pained. "Must it be blue ye'll be wearin', Carol lass?" he asked plaintively. "I was hopin' ye'd wear the green, especially for our weddin'." She stared at him in astonishment. "It'd mean the world to me, lass."

For the first time Carol wondered why on earth it had to be green, green, green with this man. "Tom," she said, "I don't know about that. I mean, I've been wearing just about nothing but green for months now. Don't you think we could give it a rest, just for one day?"

"But lass, ye look simply smashin' in green," Tom protested. "Ye're the loveliest colleen in Ireland or out of it, when ye have somethin' green on. Please, do it fer me."

Carol might have acquiesced, but then two things happened. One, her dress came back from being altered, and she modeled it in the living room for her parents and the girls. "I thought it was gonna be light green," said Marcia doubtfully.

"It's kelly green," Martha explained. "That's what Tom asked for."

"Yup," Carol agreed a little ruefully, staring down at the dress. "Irish green, since Tom's Irish."

Jan wrinkled her nose. "Mommy, you look like a big pickle. A pickle with hair."

"Janice Marie Martin, that wasn't very nice," Martha scolded, but without very much conviction, because Henry had slapped a hand over his mouth and was trying (not very hard) to hide his laughter. _"Henry!"_

"Sorry, Mommy," Jan murmured.

"But it's true," Carol blurted, staring down at herself. "I do look like a pickle with hair!" She looked up at her mother in wide-eyed despair, then at her father, whose snickering was becoming louder. "Oh dear, what am I going to do now?"

Laughing, Henry came over to her and patted her arm. "It's no big thing, Kitty, just take the dress back and tell Tom you've had enough green for a while. It's your wedding, and it's not like he's wearing green…"

"Yes he is," Carol said through a sigh. "His tux is green."

Henry stared at her in disbelief. "You mean his tie's green, don't you?"

"No—well, yes, the tie is green, but so's everything else. The cummerbund, the jacket, the pants…even his shoes are going to be green."

"_Two_ pickles with hair," said Jan, and Henry roared with laughter. Marcia, Jan and Cindy all joined in; even Martha was hard pressed to keep a straight face, and Carol, through her laughter, decided to act on Henry's suggestion and let the chips fall wherever they would.

The second thing, and the clincher, was when Tom announced that he wanted _everyone_ to wear green: the bridesmaids, the groom's attendants, the ushers, the caterers, the families, all the guests, even the minister. At that point something snapped within Carol. "Tom, you can't make demands like that! And for heaven's sake, it's my wedding too…can't I decide what color I want to wear?"

"Lass, it'd mean the world—" Tom began.

And suddenly it was very clear to Carol what she would have to do. For quite some time the green-clothing thing had been bothering her, and the longer it went on, the more it rankled. And who knew but that Tom's insistence on green would lead to his insistence on other things as well? She wasn't Irish, except perhaps by ancestry; she didn't have the affinity for the place that he did. She just didn't feel natural wearing nothing but green all the time. She looked up at him and said, softly but firmly, "Tom, I think we'd better call off the wedding."

Tom looked shocked. "Now wait a moment, Carol lass…"

She shook her head. "I just can't go on like this. I'm sorry, Tom, I do love you, and I know you mean well. But…all this green…honestly, I'm dreaming in green. I'm afraid if I keep this up for the rest of my life, my skin will start turning green. I don't feel like myself."

"Lass," Tom exclaimed frantically, "I'm sorry. If ye'll not cancel the weddin', I promise from now on ye can wear anything ye like…though of course I'll be wearin' the green tux, but—"

Carol shook her head again. "I don't want you to change either, Tom. If you feel best in green and only green, then that's fine. I'm not going to ask you to wear any other color if you don't want to. But I'm just not like that. I can't bear the idea of nothing but green for the rest of my days." She bit her lip, tugged off the engagement ring and pressed it into his palm, barely able to meet his face with its stricken, bereft expression. "I'm sorry, Tom…I'll never forget you, that much is certain."

His mouth worked but nothing came out, and she smiled sadly at him, turned and walked away. She wasn't happy at all about what had happened here; Tom was a truly sweet man, and she knew she and the girls could have had a good life with him. But he kept asking her to do something she was no longer comfortable with; and after her experience with Roy, she couldn't stomach the idea of being under a man's total control in any way at all. Roy had been unhappy with her because she hadn't borne boys; Tom was unhappy with her unless she wore green. "Next time," she vowed to herself, "I'll find a man who lets me be me." She sighed then and added wistfully, "If there _is_ a next time."

**A/N:** _Thomas Patrick O'Malley is part of canon: Carol tells Peter about breaking off her engagement with him in the premiere episode of _The Bradys_. (And it really_ was _because he wanted her to wear only green!)_


	18. Chapter 18

**ONE MORE TRY**

Most of Carol's family took her breakup with Tom quite well. Only Marcia and Cindy failed to accept the news with equanimity; Cindy wailed for quite a while, endlessly repeating "I miss Tommy" till Carol thought her head would split open. Marcia asked a lot of questions before she seemed to accept the explanation Carol kept giving her, and even then it was clear she didn't quite understand it. However, Jan did understand: she hadn't forgotten her own "pickle" remarks, and when Carol told her she was tired of Tom's always asking her to dress up like a pickle, Jan nodded solemn agreement and said, "He should go marry a pickle." Carol laughed and agreed, hugging her.

Jack and Pauline had been married themselves early in the year; and on the first weekend after Marcia, a fourth-grader, and Jan, a first-grader, went back to school, Pauline gave birth to a little boy, whom they named Oliver Henry Tyler. He took after Jack with his blond, blue-eyed features, but he had to be the chubbiest baby Carol had ever seen. Ruefully Pauline admitted that Oliver had weighed ten pounds, five ounces at birth. "I hope he grows out of it before he starts school," she said.

But Mary's two children and Carol's girls were delighted by their new cousin, and all five children often asked their mothers if they could spend the day at Jack and Pauline's house and play with little Oliver. It took some time before the sisters could persuade their kids that they'd see plenty of Oliver in the months to come, and when they got a promise that Jack, Pauline and Oliver would be at the Tyler homestead for Thanksgiving, that seemed to settle the matter.

Carol spent that school year getting over Tom. It took quite some time; she had loved him, despite the hairy problem about her wearing nothing but green. Sometimes, if she had occasion to take Marcia and Jan to school, she would see him out there, directing traffic and guiding kids across the street. Once, just once, their gazes met, purely by accident, as Carol was about to turn onto the street after dropping her daughters off. Tom looked pained; Carol felt like a heel. But then she saw his expression change—it closed down, grew cold and hard, and he made an obvious point of pivoting away from her. She sighed with resignation and drove away; after that, she got Martha to take Marcia and Jan to school. It was as well; a couple of weeks after that last non-encounter with Tom, the Studebaker broke down for good, and Henry made a deal with the local scrap yard and sold it to them, giving the money to Carol.

When school let out for the summer, the girls were bored and restless, and Carol finally took them to the local park one day, along with Joanne and Julie Ross, so they could expend their energy on the swings, slides, seesaws and merry-go-rounds there. That first trip went so well that Carol wondered how on earth she had never managed to discover the place before, and after that, trips to the park and its playground became a regular occurrence. Jan and Cindy loved the place; Marcia, now ten, consented to go primarily because it was the main meeting place for her friends from school. Marcia still occasionally played with her Barbie dolls, but she was well on her way to leaving that phase of her childhood behind, making Carol nostalgic for those early days. She no longer missed Roy, but she had fond memories of the first couple of years of their marriage, when he was so sure Marcia would be followed by a string of little brothers and was such a devoted husband and father.

One day Henry accompanied her and the girls to the park, and he whistled at sight of all the people there, young and old alike. "I tell you, if the city ever gets the silly idea to plow this place under for expansion, there'll be the biggest hue and cry the state of California ever heard. I for one wouldn't want to be the guy who suggested it."

Carol grinned. "It's like a huge open-air meeting house, isn't it, Dad?"

"Sure is." Henry resettled himself on the bench, watching Cindy with a few other young children on the seesaws, Jan in line for the slide and Marcia at some distance, talking with a large group of other girls her age. "The kids think it's quite a place, all right." He eyed Carol sidelong. "Say, Kitty, maybe you could meet some nice guy here, strolling along the path there walking his dog…"

"Oh, Dad," Carol groaned, half laughing. "I'm not looking to meet anyone right now."

"Why not?" Henry asked, looking bewildered. "You're a pretty girl, Carol Ann, it's a shame you're just sitting around on the sidelines without some nice guy giving you the eye. I tell ya, it just isn't right. You should have a husband, and those girls oughta have a father."

Carol gave him a look. "Remember what happened the last time I tried that, Dad."

Henry frowned. "Are you still hung up on O'Malley? When're you gonna get over him? Mr. Emerald Bile himself. I'd still like to know what his thing was with all the green. I'm surprised he didn't demand you dye your hair green. If the guy misses Ireland that much, why doesn't he go back and roll in all that green grass they're supposed to have over there?"

"Dad," Carol muttered, trying not to laugh at the "Emerald Bile" remark. "No, it's got nothing to do with Tom. I just don't feel ready yet, that's all."

Henry finally sobered and regarded his daughter with a sympathetic look. "Well, that's all right, Kitty. You know your mom and I love having the girls around, and you can stay with us as long as you need to, you hear? If you meet someone, fine. If not, okay. I just want you to know that."

"I do know, Dad," Carol said gratefully. "Thanks."

Carol and Henry grew closer as father and daughter after that. Marcia started fifth grade, Jan second, and Cindy turned four and talked constantly about being allowed to go to kindergarten. The weather cooled a bit, about as much as it ever did in southern California, and then an unusually wet winter set in. It started shortly before Christmas and continued seemingly nonstop for weeks. The girls quickly got terminal cases of cabin fever. They had received a cat for Christmas, an adult named Fluffy who had been adopted from an animal shelter, and Christmas vacation at least passed with little incident because the girls had so much fun getting acquainted with their new pet and playing with her.

But long after the new year, even Fluffy couldn't keep them occupied; and Cindy was the most cooped-up of them all, since at least Marcia and Jan got out to school every day. They began to wonder dismally if the rain would ever let up. "So much for sunny southern California," Carol murmured once.

But then there came a February day that dawned full of promise. The sun rose in a watery blue sky, and the weather forecast called for at least three days' break in the continual offshore storm systems that had been marching through the area all this time. Fortunately it was a Saturday, and Henry and Martha were as glad to hear the news as Carol and the girls were. "Let's go to the park!" Jan suggested.

"Yeah, I hate sitting in the house all weekend with nothing to do," Marcia agreed. "I miss talking with my friends over there."

"I'm going down the slides!" Cindy announced. She had a funny little lisp that her older sisters sometimes poked fun at; but nobody really minded it, since she was still just a little girl. "Just like you, Carol," Martha said. "She'll probably outgrow it the same way you did."

So after lunch, Carol had the girls don sweaters, and they all trooped over to the park. Marcia spotted a group of her friends and immediately went to join them; Jan headed straight for the merry-go-round, and Cindy pleaded with her mother to let her go on the slide all by herself till Carol gave in and watched her run in that direction. A moment later someone tapped on her shoulder; it was Joanne Ross, whose Julie was on her way to the merry-go-round as well.

"Hey, Carol, where're you going? Haven't seen you in ages!" she said, grinning.

"That's true!" Carol agreed, grinning back. "Let's find a place to sit—I ought to keep an eye on Cindy. She's on the slides by herself for the first time."

Joanne laughed. "A milestone for sure. Here, this looks like a good place." They found an empty picnic table and settled onto the bench on one side, backs to the table, so that they were facing the playground area and Carol could easily see Cindy. For about half an hour or so they chatted, catching up on what had been going on with each other, their respective offspring, and extended families.

In the middle of something Joanne was saying, there was a commotion at the slide, and Carol squinted in that direction, her "mother radar" on full alert. One boy was just climbing the ladder to the slide; another boy was yelling up at him, and a little girl who looked alarmingly like Cindy was sitting on the ground near the second boy. "Oh no," Carol blurted, interrupting Joanne.

"What's the matter?" Joanne asked, belatedly seeing Carol's expression.

"I think something happened to Cindy," she said. "I'll be right back, Joanne." She arose without waiting for Joanne's response and started across the rolling green grass toward the slide. Even as she made her way there, she could see a tall, fit-looking man with dark hair stop beside the slide, apparently questioning the children. She doubled her pace just in time to hear the second little boy remark, "She's just dirty."

"Cindy, what happened?" she broke in, and then saw all the mud on the backs of Cindy's legs, the hem of her skirt and the bottom of her sweater. "Oh dear…just look at all that mud!"

Cindy looked up, tears sliding down her cheeks, and said woefully, "I'm sorry, Mommy."

The man said then, "I understand it wasn't her fault. Another boy cut in line and pushed her down to get her out of his way. I, uh, hope it all washes out."

Carol sighed, surveying her daughter, and then turned a reluctant smile to him. "Well, I suppose there are worse things that could have happened," she admitted, smoothing down the wispy blonde tufts that had escaped from Cindy's curled pigtails. "Thank you for intervening."

"Oh, not at all," the man told her with a smile that warmed his whole face. "By the way, my name's Mike Brady, and this here is my son Bobby."

"I'm Carol Martin," she replied, accepting his handshake, unable to resist smiling back. "This is my youngest daughter, Cindy."

"Hi, Cindy," Mike said and then to Carol, "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Martin."

"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Brady," said Carol, her smile lingering for some reason. "Well, as long as the kids are all right, I won't keep you."

"Oh, there's nothing I need to get away to," Mike said with a shrug. "We're just relaxing out here in the park while the sun's shining. We all kind of needed a run."

" 'All'?" Carol echoed, curious despite herself.

Mike laughed. "Sorry. I have two older boys and a dog as well—they're over there playing Frisbee." He looked around then, and Carol followed his example, only to see a good dozen or more kids staring at them and Bobby and Cindy nowhere in sight. "I think we're attracting an audience. I won't keep you either, I'm sure your husband must be waiting."

"Actually…" Carol began, then frowned towards the line of waiting kids. "I hope you don't mind if we sit down somewhere." She was sure Joanne would understand; there was no question that her friend must have been watching this whole thing unfold.

Mike Brady agreed, and they ambled over to a park bench on the edge of a large cleared area where there were several ball and Frisbee games in progress; a few dogs had joined in some of them. At first they couldn't quite look at each other; they spoke while watching a few college kids throwing a football around while two German shepherds chased it in tandem. To her surprise, Carol discovered that, like her, Mike was widowed; and more than that, he was also raising three kids on his own. The difference was that his were boys, and each of his sons was a year older than each of her daughters. The coincidence made them both laugh. The only thing she couldn't quite tell him was what had happened before Roy's death. She knew she wasn't the only woman who'd ever had her husband walk out on her; but divorce was still such a nasty concept, an idea that was met with at least covert disapproval. From their short conversation, she gleaned that Mike's marriage had been a very happy one, and felt inadequate in the face of that.

Then Mike asked after a pause in the talk, "Say, uh, you live around here?"

"Yes, I do," she said. "When Roy…died, we had to move in with my parents, but they've been just wonderful about it. Roy didn't leave much money and I wasn't working, since I had the girls to care for. My parents said the girls needed their mother now, especially, with their father gone, and told me to bring them home and not worry about living expenses. Though of course, we try to help around the house all we can, to make a contribution."

"I see," Mike said. "We're a couple blocks from here, just over on Sweet William."

"Oh, I know where that is," she exclaimed. "It's a lovely neighborhood. My parents are on Nasturtium Drive." She pointed. "Just down that way about five blocks."

Mike nodded with evident recognition. "Then the girls probably go to the same school the boys do."

"I expect so. They enjoy school—Jan and Marcia do in any case, and as I mentioned, Cindy just can't wait to go. I think she wants to learn how to write her alphabet and read the little books she has, and after Jan went to kindergarten, she was enthralled by the idea. It'll be nice to see her start."

"Bobby likes it," Mike remarked. "I think his favorite part is Show and Tell. He wanted to take Tiger in for it the other day." He indicated a large, shaggy cream-colored dog with bits of brown in his fur, galloping alongside a dark-haired boy chasing a Frisbee.

Carol laughed. "Isn't it funny, the strange things kids want to take to school and show their friends? Jan trundled off four baby dolls once."

"Oh, that's nothing," Mike bantered, grinning. "Greg wanted to take his baby brother in once!" They broke into laughter, and just then Cindy trudged up to them, looking downcast. The mud on her legs had dried to a thin crust, but her skirt and sweater still bore dark, wet stains.

"Mommy," she said, "I'm ready to go home. I gotta take a bath, don't I."

Carol grinned in spite of herself and gently twined one of Cindy's sausage-curl ponytails around her finger. "You're right, sweetheart, you sure do." She turned back to Mike. "I expect I should get Cindy's clothes in the wash as soon as I can to get as much mud out as possible. It was very nice talking with you, Mr. Brady."

"I enjoyed it too, Mrs. Martin," he said, "but…just call me Mike."

She stilled in the act of rising, looking at him curiously, her blue eyes warm and her face pleasantly surprised. "Oh…then please, call me Carol." She lingered, though she did stand up straight. "I guess you and your sons are regulars here."

"Absolutely," Mike said, chuckling. "Between their energy and a dog that has to be walked every day, we know this place like our own yard."

"I see," said Carol, then cleared her throat and decided to take the chance. He was a very nice-looking man, clean-shaven and trim, with a very open smile and wonderful blue eyes; something about him made her want to maintain contact. It was strange that they hadn't met here before; but maybe, she thought, she hadn't been ready before now. She took a deep breath and remarked, not entirely casually, "Well…we'll be here tomorrow, if it isn't raining."

"We probably will too," said Mike. "I suspect we're going to be armed with a picnic lunch, thanks to our housekeeper and the boys' begging. Uh—listen, you and your girls are welcome to join us. We'll bring enough for everybody."

"That sounds lovely," said Carol with enthusiasm. "Then I guess it's a date. See you then."

"See you tomorrow," Mike responded amiably, and Carol took Cindy's hand and started away across the clearing. It was tempting to look back at Mike, but she didn't dare, because she had to dodge so many ball players and Frisbee-throwers, as well as the odd dog or two. She thought about rounding up Marcia and Jan, especially when she saw Joanne waiting at the same picnic table with Julie sitting beside her, swinging her legs energetically back and forth.

"Well, Carol," Joanne remarked, "sounds like you've made a conquest."

Carol snorted. "I wouldn't call it that."

"I don't know what else you could call it," Joanne said, grinning. "You two were over there talking for quite a while. I don't think that's just a casual encounter."

Carol decided not to tell her that she was bringing the girls back the next day to join Mike and his sons for a picnic lunch. She didn't need all sorts of gossip traveling all over the kaffeeklatsch. Come to think of it, now that Joanne thought she had a new boyfriend, gossip was going to travel anyway. Joanne had been telling Carol for months now that she needed to start getting out and meeting guys if she didn't want to dry up into an ancient widow woman, and now she looked positively gleeful. "See you later," she said instead. "I've got to get Cindy home and into a good soapy bath."

"Oh, so I see," Joanne mused, surveying Cindy. "Poor kid. Well, then, happy bath."

"What's that mean, Mommy?" Cindy asked as Carol tugged her along, trying to locate her other daughters in the crowds. "And who was that man you were talking to?"

"Just a friend," said Carol evasively. Maybe she could get away with that at least till Cindy was in the bathtub…but she doubted it.


	19. Chapter 19

**THE GHOSTS OF MARRIAGES PAST**

The picnic with Mike and his sons went surprisingly well and culminated in Mike's asking her out for a dinner date. The invitation surprised and delighted Carol; she kept the news to herself for a while, replaying hers and Mike's conversation in her head as she strolled along with her chattering daughters. She didn't hear a word they'd said till they'd reached her parents' front yard and Marcia asked a question that she missed completely.

"Mom!" all three girls cried together, and Carol snapped back to reality, startled.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You sure looked like you were someplace else," Marcia remarked. Her face grew suddenly knowing, too much so for a ten-year-old. "You must've been thinking about Mr. Brady."

Carol gave her a look down her nose and said, "That, young lady, is none of your concern." Marcia shrugged, but Carol knew she hadn't convinced her. No matter; she had no intention of enlightening anyone just yet. She wanted to replay the pleasant afternoon with Mike and try to decide what she wanted to wear on their date this coming Friday night.

She debated going to the weekly neighborhood women's kaffeeklatsch until Martha unwittingly reminded her it was going to be at the Tyler house by asking, "Should we get some more coffee for the ladies, do you think?" Then Carol groaned quietly and resigned herself to the barrage of questions she was going to get from everyone. Undoubtedly Joanne had spread the word by now.

And sure enough, she had. Reluctant to divulge news of her upcoming date with Mike, Carol let them ask her what the picnic had been like, and how the girls had treated Mike; and then, when they found out Mike had three sons, they asked her about the Brady boys. Carol was the very uncomfortable center of attention throughout the klatsch, and it was with enormous relief that she watched the last of the women amble away down the street.

"Well," said Martha, surveying the table littered with coffee cups and plates of crumbs that were the only evidence of the three dozen oatmeal raisin cookies Carol had baked earlier that morning. "Seems you're the talk of the town today."

"I noticed," said Carol dryly, beginning to gather up mugs.

Martha laughed at her demeanor. "They do like to gossip, don't they?" she remarked good-naturedly, following her daughter around the table and picking up the cookie plates. "Maybe they just need something else to keep them busy. Next week you should offer to teach them cross-stitching."

"Sandy Browne said she was going to take up macramé," Carol remarked offhandedly. "I have a feeling that's going to be the big thing in the group. Anyway, I'm just glad it's all over. It was really driving me crazy."

"Hmm," was Martha's only comment. Not till Carol was washing mugs, plates and silverware at the sink did her mother finally ask, "So what's next? If the picnic went that well, surely this Mike Brady must be interested in seeing you again."

Carol sighed gently; her parents would have had to know sooner or later, but she hadn't wanted to tell them in front of all those women. "He is. We're going out to dinner on Friday evening, so if you and Dad don't mind staying with the girls…"

"Oh, not at all," said Martha, looking delighted. "Which restaurant is he taking you to?"

"I don't know," Carol said. "I told him to surprise me."

Martha laughed. "If that isn't a sign of trust, I don't know what is. Well, let's assume it's a nice place, and we can go through your closet. If you don't like anything there, it's a good excuse to go shopping. Once Henry gets back with Cindy, we can leave." Henry and Cindy had gone to the park playground to avoid the kaffeeklatsch; Henry flat-out admitted he didn't want to be caught in a sea of inquisitive women, and they all knew Cindy would have been bored silly and pestering Carol to go to the park anyway.

Once they'd put away the newly washed dishes, they surveyed Carol's wardrobe, decided nothing looked exactly right, and went shopping almost as soon as Henry and Cindy walked in the door. Henry paused to stare at the car backing out of the driveway and then disappearing down the street; then he shook his head. "Shopping again? Is that all women are good for?" he muttered. "What could they be spending money on this time?"

"Mommy said she might get a new dress," Cindy piped up then.

Henry focused on his little granddaughter in surprise. "Oh, she did? What for?"

"She's going on a date with Mr. Brady," Cindy explained helpfully, that innocent-cherub look on her face that always seemed to get her off the hook when people would have scolded her for doing exactly what her mother's kaffeeklatsch crowd had been doing less than an hour before. "When we were at the picnic, Mr. Brady asked her to go out with him. Mommy told us yesterday and said it's a big secret."

"Not anymore," Henry noted dryly. "Well, I suppose that's as good an excuse as you can think of. Let's just hope this Brady fella isn't another Tom O'Malley…or worse, another Roy Martin."

‡ ‡ ‡

The restaurant Mike took Carol to was a seafood place Carol had always wanted to try but never gotten around to. She remembered asking Tom a few times if they could eat there, only to have Tom say he didn't like the menu and that was that. She was delighted by Mike's choice of venue, and smiled brightly up at him as he pulled out her chair for her and she took her seat. "You look thrilled," Mike commented with a grin, taking his own chair.

"I've wanted to try this place for ages," Carol explained. "I just…never managed to do it. This was a perfect choice, Mike."

He looked pleasantly surprised. "Oh, good, I'm glad it meets with your approval. I'm told they have some really good California white wines here, and that the menu covers dishes from different parts of the country. So there's Maine lobster, Oregon salmon, Alaskan king crab, Florida swordfish…"

"Oh my goodness," Carol said and rolled her eyes playfully. "I'll never be able to decide."

Of course, they did settle on choices eventually; Mike chose the wine, and he and Carol both tasted it and pronounced it delicious. Having placed their orders, they relaxed a bit for the wait, and Mike cleared his throat. "So how did the girls take the news that you were going on a date?" he asked.

"Very well actually," Carol said, surprised yet at their reactions, especially Marcia's. "Marcia still has good memories of her father, so I wasn't sure how she would take it…" She caught herself then, realized what she'd been saying, and looked nervously up to see Mike watching with a mildly curious expression on his face.

"Do you mind my asking what happened to your husband?" he inquired gently.

Carol hesitated. "It's a long story," she warned.

"That's okay. It'll help pass the time while we're waiting for our food," Mike pointed out with a small grin. "Of course, that's only if you don't mind telling me. If you don't want to, that's fine too."

Given the out, Carol took it, even though she knew she was a coward. "It's a little painful to remember," she said, which was still the truth to some extent. Mostly she hated what Roy had done to the girls, especially Cindy, who had been shortchanged of a father all her short life. It was little wonder she had grown so attached to Tom. Carol didn't want to set Cindy, or her sisters, up for more disappointment.

Mike nodded. "Okay," he said without fuss.

Carol was as curious about Mike's late wife as he seemed to be about Roy; but she wasn't sure it was her place to ask, when she didn't want to tell him her story. She tried to be oblique about it. "So did your boys have any objections to your taking me out to dinner?" she asked.

Mike looked up from his wine glass and laughed a little. "They were a little doubtful, but Greg convinced his brothers. He's got a pretty good head on his shoulders. They do miss their mother very much, but I think they understand that Sue wouldn't have wanted them to wallow in their misery." He cleared his throat again. "She told me shortly before she died that she didn't want that. She said if I ever met another woman, I shouldn't hesitate to get back into the dating game."

"She sounds like a very generous lady," Carol ventured hopefully.

Mike nodded, gazing earnestly at her. "Sue was a great mother, a wonderful wife…I don't think there was anybody who didn't love her. We got married before I'd finished my architectural degree, and Greg was born shortly before I graduated." He chuckled. "She used to wish that one day she could have a little girl, but she didn't show the boys any less love."

_I'll bet Roy could have taken some lessons from Sue,_ Carol thought. "How did she…?"

"Cancer," said Mike. "It started out as ovarian cancer, when Bobby was about a year old, and she got through that fine. But then they found more of it in her uterus, and it just got away from her, the doctors, everybody. Chemotherapy didn't work, medications did nothing…even having a hysterectomy didn't wipe it out, because by then it had spread. Cervical cancer, and then it spread to her intestines, and there just wasn't anything that would make a dent in it. So…so Sue told the doctors to stop the chemo, and we took her home so she could be with the family."

Carol bit her lip, feeling for him; his expression was faraway, filled with a remembered agony that tugged at her heart. "Oh, Mike," she murmured, "I'm so sorry. It really must have been devastating."

He nodded absently. "It was." Then he blinked and came back to the moment. "But we tried to make things as comfortable as we could for her. She died at home, the way she wanted to."

Carol only nodded; there wasn't much you could say, really. But she found herself thinking how lucky Sue Brady had been, to have such a caring family, three loving sons, an adoring husband. _Well, you're lucky too,_ she scolded herself. _Two out of three ain't bad, as they say. Your family loves you, your daughters love you. Don't go feeling sorry for yourself._

"A penny for your thoughts," Mike said softly then, startling her.

She was too affected by Mike's story of Sue to dissemble. "I was just thinking what a lucky lady your wife was. Surrounded by people who loved her so much. Especially you." Mike looked so surprised that before she knew it, she was pouring out her own tale of her marriage to Roy, how he'd wanted a boy and disdained the girls he kept getting, how he'd finally walked out on them all and then had been killed. Mike listened in silence, eyes widening with amazement now and then, his face sympathetic.

"Wow," he finally said when she'd finished. "So it's been pretty rough for you! I guess the girls must miss him though, huh?"

"Well, Cindy never knew him, so I'm sure it's more the _idea_ of a father that she misses. Jan doesn't remember much about him, except the last year or so when I was pregnant with Cindy and Roy tended to get surly if anyone told him I might be having a girl. Marcia might…although Roy was pretty bad when we were expecting Jan, too."

"It's a shame," Mike said sincerely, gazing at her. "I know I've only barely met your daughters, but they seem like terrific little girls. Sue would've loved to give the boys a sister."

"And Roy would have killed to get the girls a brother. Maybe literally," Carol remarked, making them both laugh. "Oh, well. Oh—here's our food."

She was surprised how much better she felt, now that Mike knew her whole story and hadn't reacted badly. He'd just been sympathetic toward her, which was very welcome. As they ate, they went on talking about other things, filling each other in on their families. Carol wondered if she would get to meet Mike's brother and sister and parents one day, and then told herself to take it easy. It was much too early in the game for any speculation; but one thing she did know: she liked Mike Brady very, very much.


	20. Chapter 20

**FAMILY RECKONING**

When it happened that Jan's birthday was coming up and Carol mentioned it in passing one evening when she and Mike had been dating about a month, it prompted a comparison of all their children's birthdays. They were amazed to learn that all six were either spring or summer babies. "All in a cluster like that," Carol marveled. "It's amazing, all the coincidences we keep stumbling over."

"Yeah, isn't it?" Mike agreed, sounding a bit startled. "I keep wondering when it's gonna end. Next thing you know, we're gonna find out our parents all grew up next door to each other."

Carol laughed. Mike was a down-to-earth man, sometimes quite serious; but he also had a sense of humor, which she enjoyed. As a parent, she had learned years ago, you needed one. "I don't think that'd surprise me anymore," she admitted cheerfully. "In any case, I've told Jan she can invite some school friends to a party if she likes, but I think it'd be very nice if you and the boys would come too."

"Why sure," Mike accepted in a jovial tone. "Although I think I'd better get the present…the boys aren't going to be too interested in looking for a girl's birthday gift. Of course, Greg's birthday isn't too far behind Jan's, and you and the girls are all welcome to be there."

"Thank you," Carol said. "I may have to ask Dad what the big thing is with boys these days. I don't have any experience with buying boys' toys, especially older boys." She smiled a touch sheepishly; the memory of Roy wistfully looking over an aisle full of boys' toys one Christmas season was still vivid in her mind. "Roy got my nephew a big colorful plastic truck one Christmas, but at the time Alan was a toddler. I doubt Greg would have much interest in something like that, now that he's about to turn twelve."

"I have to agree with you there," Mike said, chuckling. "Well, Greg's actually a pretty athletic kid. He does well in sports, and he especially likes baseball. You might consider something baseball-related."

Carol was glad for that suggestion; it wouldn't have occurred to her at all. She was just too used to thinking up gift ideas for girls. A couple of days later, while Marcia and Jan were in school, she borrowed her parents' car and took Cindy shopping for Greg's birthday present, as well as one for Jan. Though Jan was still into dolls, she was also quite the budding little artist, and Carol had in mind some fancy drawing pencils for Jan to experiment with.

"Oh, Mommy, look at all the pretty babies!" cried Cindy once they had paused in the doll aisle of the toy store. "I wish I could have one for my very own. Jan says I can't play with her dolls 'cause I always put the wrong clothes on 'em."

Carol grinned at that. Cindy was as solicitous a doll mommy as Jan had once been, but Jan liked a certain amount of order to her belongings, and Cindy did have a habit of trying to fit one doll's clothing onto another. "Well, maybe something nice will happen on your birthday," she said with a smile. "It's not so far away now, you know. Let's look for some pretty art pencils for Jan."

In short order they found a set, and then Carol took Cindy's hand and led her into the boys' section of the store. She had vaguely thought of getting a glove for Greg, but when confronted by all the different mitts available, she conceded defeat and perused assorted other baseball paraphernalia. Finally she found a Dodgers jersey that bore the name of one of the team's most popular players and bought that.

"Who's that for?" Cindy asked.

"Greg," said Carol, and at her child's blank look, elaborated, "You know, Mike's boy. His birthday comes soon after Jan's. Mike and the boys are going to be at Jan's party, and we'll go to Greg's when it comes."

Cindy wrinkled her nose. "There's not gonna be any girls at that party, Mommy, I bet."

"Of course there will," Carol teased her. "You and Jan and Marcia."

"But Greg isn't gonna ask any girls from his school," Cindy said. "And they'd all be Marcia's friends anyway. Can I stay home with Grandma and Grandpa, Mommy? I won't have any fun."

"But then you'd miss out on the cake and ice cream," Carol said coaxingly.

Cindy had to think that over. Finally she asked, "Is it gonna be at Mr. Brady's house?" Carol nodded, and the little girl considered the question some more. Then: "Do they have a swingset?"

"I'm sure they do. You and Bobby could go and play on that, if you get bored. Greg's going to be 12, after all, and I know it wouldn't be much fun for you with big kids around."

Cindy sighed in an unwittingly comical long-suffering manner and finally agreed. "Well, I guess so. As long as I can have cake and ice cream. That's the most important part!…well, 'cept for the presents!"

Carol laughed. "That's right, I guess the presents are pretty important! Okay, well, we're finished here, let's go on home so Grandma and Grandpa don't wonder where we are."

Jan's birthday came first, and Jan was quite surprised when Mike appeared at the house along with Bobby, Greg and Peter. "I didn't know you were coming!" she exclaimed when Carol let them in. "Mommy didn't say you were gonna come."

"Then I guess it was a nice surprise for you," Mike said with a cheery grin, handing Carol a wrapped package. _Sotto voce_ he murmured to Carol, "At least I _hope_ it's nice for her."

Carol grinned. "It's certainly nice for me," she told him low, and Mike did a priceless double-take before clearing his throat and returning her grin. Something seemed to spark between them, and to Carol it seemed so obvious that she wondered why no one else in the room had noticed the flash of light she was sure must have emanated from them.

Carol was utterly amazed, and Jan thrilled, when the gift from Mike and the boys turned out to be an entire baby-doll wardrobe. "Look," Jan cried, "little booties and sweaters and even diapers, and everything! Oh, it's bee-_yoo_-tiful, Mr. Brady!"

"I'm glad you like it, Jan," Mike replied, "but uh…how about you call me Mike from now on, huh? That goes for your sisters too."

Jan blinked up at him, then smiled shyly. "Okay. Thank you for my present, Mike."

"You're welcome," Mike told her. Carol, watching him the entire time, suddenly felt inadequate. It was time she extended a similar gesture to Mike's sons, but she wondered uneasily if they'd take it as well as Jan had done. They had happier memories of their mother than the girls did of Roy, so their reaction was bound to be different.

At some point during the party, Mary cornered Carol in the kitchen. "Hmm…so that's the fella you're seeing now," she said thoughtfully. "He sure is a nice-looking guy."

"He's not just nice-looking," Carol said, "he's nice inside too, where it counts."

"Even better," said Mary. "How long have you been seeing him?"

"A couple of months or so. We met at the park on that one sunny day back in February, after we had all that rain," Carol explained. "The girls and his sons seem to get along pretty well with each other. Not that they have a lot of contact…but, you know, they're all good kids, and they're not stupid. They can see that Mike and I are interested in each other."

"Hmm," Mary mused, peering out the window into the backyard where Bobby and Cindy were bobbing energetically up and down on the seesaw that Henry had installed for Carol and Jack when they'd first moved to California all those years ago. "Well, seems to me the youngest boy and Cindy get along really well at least. They look so cute together, don't they?"

Carol nodded, following her sister's gaze. "The older kids are a little more cautious. If we all meet at the park, Marcia usually goes off with her friends, Greg and Peter gang up with their dog, and Bobby and Cindy run off to the playground. Jan either tries to join Greg and Peter, or goes over to the playground with Bobby and Cindy. I think she's torn between playing with the boys' dog and getting to all her favorite playground rides."

"Well, she's just eight," said Mary. She paused a moment and shook her head. "Where does the time go? Marcia'll be eleven soon, and my God, Cindy's going to be five this summer. What'll you do with yourself all day when she starts kindergarten this fall, Carol? You'll be at wits' end."

"No, I've got plenty to do around here," Carol assured her. "I've been doing the heavier housework for Mom—the laundry, dusting and vacuuming, things like that. She does the cooking and the lighter kitchen cleanup. We worked out a deal so I wouldn't feel like a lazy moocher."

"Oh, good," said Mary, letting her gaze stray back to Bobby and Cindy again. "Yup, they sure look cute together, all right…"

Carol rolled her eyes tolerantly to herself. She could read her sister at two hundred paces. "Okay, Mary, what's on your mind? I can tell you're just dying to ask me something personal."

"I hate the way you read my mind like that," Mary complained, and Carol grinned unrepentantly. "Okay, okay. I'm just worried about you, a little bit. I can tell already that Mike's different from Roy—he brought Jan a birthday present, and she's not even his daughter, after all. But…well, I mean…after what you went through with that…that crazy green leprechaun…" Mary hesitated, then made a mildly frustrated noise and blurted, "Well, to be blunt about it, I hope you're being cautious this time. Neither you nor the girls need the kind of trauma Roy and Tom put you through. I know they need a daddy in their lives, and I know you want to give them one. But just be sure this Mike Brady is worthy of their love and trust, okay?—not to mention yours. Be really careful, Carol, and be really sure."

"I am, Mary, I am," Carol said quietly. "But don't forget, Mike's been through a lot too—so have his boys. Did I tell you his wife died of cancer? I don't know much about her, but I know enough to realize they all loved her very much. No matter what Mike and I feel for each other, there's going to be a lot of adjustment to go through, on everyone's part—his kids, my kids, and the two of us. For now, we're good friends, we're dating each other, we're having a good time and getting to know each other, and letting our kids get to know each other too. Nothing quick and sudden."

Mary looked impressed. "Wow," she said. "Y'know, Carol, you've definitely grown up."

"I know," Carol said, glancing back toward the living room. "I had to. I can't afford to be naïve, for either the girls' sake or my own." She smiled. "But I have a feeling Mike Brady will be worth all the caution. You can tell a good person, Mary, and Mike's a good person. I know it, deep inside."

Just then Jack came in, carrying Oliver. "Hi there. What's this, a hen party?"

"Let's just say it's none of your business…nor any of that precocious young man's either," Mary said with a good-natured grin, chucking the almost-two-year-old Oliver under the chin. "Whaddaya say there, champ? So Jack, you had a chance to talk to Carol's new boyfriend yet?"

"Yeah," said Jack with enthusiasm. "I tell you, Carol, you picked a winner this time, all right. He's friendly, personable, good guy all around. Not afraid to talk. And it's amazing, he picked this terrific present for Jan, even though he hasn't got any daughters himself."

"I bet he was coached by some female relative," Mary speculated. "Probably his mother."

"If he was," Carol broke in a little hotly, "he wouldn't be afraid to admit it!"

"He did admit it," Jack said, eyeing Mary. "He said in so many words that his sister Patricia advised him on what the best kinds of presents are for little girls. What is it with you, Mary, you determined to believe the worst about this guy just because he's interested in Carol?"

"Carol's made mistakes," Mary began, then snapped her mouth shut when she saw Carol's glare.

"Aren't you the one who just said I've grown up?" Carol demanded. "What are you trying to do, Mary? Do you really think I've matured, or was it just lip service?"

Mary groaned aloud. "Geez, Carol, I'm sorry. That just didn't come out right. I only meant that…" She stopped herself, then shook her head. "Never mind what I meant. I'll just shove my foot that much deeper in. Before I get myself in any more trouble, I'll just tell you he seems nice, Carol, and I hope it stays that way. Now let me find Chrissy and Alan and get out of here."

Martha, with an exquisite sense of timing, appeared in the doorway just as Mary reached it, and caught her firstborn by the shoulders. "Oh no you don't. I heard some raised voices in here, and I want to know what's going on. I can't believe my three adult offspring are bickering the same way their children do."

"I just shot my mouth off, Mom," Mary said, "and I'm trying to keep from doing any more damage. Seems the only way I can achieve that is to leave."

"Mary," Jack and Carol promptly chorused. Jack added, "Seriously, sis, what do you really think of Carol's boyfriend? And while we're at it, Mom, what do you think of him?"

"I like him very much," Martha informed him. "Michael Brady is a good, responsible man with a solid head on his shoulders. He's got a lot to offer a woman, and I for one am positively overjoyed that he's interested in Carol. He's exactly what she needs after Tom the Green Goblin, and especially after Roy's desertion. He likes Carol and he likes the girls, and he's shown it. Your father's in there now talking to him. Carol, dear, you've picked a fine young man this time around."

"I got that impression too," Jack said with a firm nod.

"I'm not arguing with that," Mary protested helplessly. "I just want to be sure Carol and the girls don't get hurt again. There're so many duds out there…I'm just glad to hear that more than one person agrees that she found herself a good one. It's just, you know…once burned, twice shy."

Martha smiled. "I know you're concerned for Carol, dear. But Carol's a grown woman, and I think she's perfectly capable of making her own judgments. Her only problem was that she didn't have a lot of experience. Not like you did before you married Roger. You dated a lot of boys through high school and college, so you learned to tell the good ones from the bad. Carol was more cautious, she always was. She had that steady boyfriend for a while, and then there was that football player with the huge ego…"

Jack snorted with laughter. "Tank Gates. Who could ever forget that guy? Man, Carol, am I ever glad you didn't marry him. He'd've been just like Roy, demanding boys."

Carol shrugged. "At least I saw Tank for what he was."

"He wasn't subtle like Roy was, that's why," Mary said. Carol nodded rueful concession to her point.

"Anyway," Martha said, "she just didn't date as extensively as you did. I think she'd prefer to find a nice, safe, decent man and settle in with him. And I think Mike Brady could be that man."

Carol smiled. Deep inside, she was beginning to think so too; but she didn't want to rush it. It was going to take time, pure and simple, and she was willing to invest that time. She sensed Mike was worth it.


	21. Chapter 21

**THAT LITTLE FOUR-LETTER WORD**

It was one of the happiest summers of Carol's life. She and Mike and their children had a chance to get to know one another, to get used to each other and become friends; and they all seemed to do pretty well together, despite that as often as not they couldn't find much common ground. It was easier with the younger children, who could enjoy playing either with Tiger or on the playground. Greg and Marcia had the hardest time; they were growing beyond these sorts of things and starting to change, signs of their upcoming teen years. Mike and Carol found it something of a relief to be able to bounce concerns and complaints off each other.

School began, and Carol had more free time because now Cindy was in kindergarten. Mike, of course, had to work during the week; but occasionally he called Carol from work to set up plans for dates, and she began to look forward to hearing from him now and then.

All this time, Carol had been secretly wondering what Mike really felt for her. She supposed that he was being cautious, considering that he must obviously still have some feelings for his dead wife, and couldn't blame him for that. She herself was trying to take things slow and careful in the wake of her experiences with Roy and Tom. But did that mean he still thought of her strictly as a friend, or did he feel the same excitement and sparks she did whenever they were together?

One evening in early October, Carol and Mike went to a party at the home of a work colleague of his, dressing up for the occasion and feeling as if it were a particularly special night. In actual fact, the colleague was celebrating his promotion and accompanying raise, so there was a very festive mood among the guests. They were having the party at a country club not very far from the man's home, and Carol was slightly overwhelmed when they walked in and were seated at a table for eight. "Oh my goodness."

"Are you okay?" Mike asked.

She smiled. "Well, it's been a very long time since I was at any sort of formal affair." The last one she could remember had been at Mary and Roger's wedding. Jack and Pauline had decided to eschew all the frills and glamour of a huge wedding and instead had had a quiet backyard ceremony attended only by family and close friends. Mary and Roger, on the other hand, had gone the whole route, with the formal wedding gown and tuxedo, bridesmaids' dresses, elaborate decorations, big reception with elegant dinner—the works. Carol had still been in high school at the time.

"Well, it looks formal, but Steve and Maria actually are really fun-loving folks. They have three teenagers, and every summer they go on a camping trip to one of the national parks. This whole thing is a little out of character for them, but I guess they decided this was really something to celebrate."

"It's a lot of effort to go to just to celebrate a raise," Carol remarked.

Mike nodded. "Yeah, seems that way, doesn't it? There must be something else going on."

As it turned out, there was. Steve and Maria's oldest son had just gotten engaged, and they were celebrating this as well. That meant there was dancing after the dinner, and Carol was delighted at this; she and Mike had done a lot of informal things, primarily dinner out, picnics and outings with their kids, and trips to the park. This was more of a social occasion, and Carol really felt as if she were on a true date, being pampered like this with good food and the prospect of old-fashioned slow dancing.

For a while the actual dancing was fairly fast-paced and nostalgic for the adults, featuring as it did the dances from their teen years. Carol was surprised and thrilled to find that Mike was willing enough to get up and join in the fun, and they found themselves laughing almost all the way through the various old dances they remembered from their high-school years. Mike was only three years older than Carol, so they had dozens of pop-culture memories in common.

Then the lights went down and the mood changed, and couples gathered on the floor to sway slowly in each other's arms. For the first time Mike held Carol close as they drifted around the dance floor, and Carol found herself so strongly drawn to Mike, physically, that she wondered that he didn't see it and comment on it. He himself seemed quite serene, though he smiled readily every time their gazes met.

Finally Carol ventured hopefully, "It really feels nice to be here in your arms like this, Mike."

Mike looked at her as if in surprise. "Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you."

Carol grinned up at him, overjoyed. There had to be something more going on here than just friendship; she had figured they were on a more-than-friends level from the time Mike had first asked her out to dinner, but they'd never evinced anything to suggest that this was the case. It would undoubtedly have shocked her parents, siblings and daughters (and embarrassed the living daylights out of the peer-pressure-sensitive Marcia) to find that Carol often lay in bed at night dreaming of what it would be like to kiss Mike, to hold him close, even to wake up beside him in the morning. She hadn't been this physically drawn even to Roy, and the sensation of wanting a man like this was still new to her, so that she often had all she could do to keep her grasp on her common sense.

But they'd known each other almost a year now, she reflected as Mike gently rotated her in his arms. Wasn't it about time they indulged a little, let themselves go? She supposed the only thing holding her back was her uncertainty about Mike's feelings toward her. Maybe it was up to her, she thought, feeling apprehensive yet rather bold to even consider it. But she'd been so darn passive with Roy; he had made their decisions, directed the development of their relationship, and even seemed to expect a yes out of Carol when he'd proposed to her. He'd seemed safe, protective, wise in the ways of the world, and that had influenced her, maybe unduly. Safe and protective was fine; but now she wondered if Roy had ever really loved her—and whether Mike thought he ever could.

The dance ended and Mike released her long enough to join in the applause for the small orchestra that was providing the music. A waltz started up and he grinned unexpectedly, then gathered Carol into his arms again and began sweeping her around the floor in graceful coordination with the other couples. Carol stared up at him in delighted wonder. "I didn't know you could waltz!"

"I'm a man of many talents," Mike kidded, and they laughed softly. "I learned ages ago, more under duress than anything else really—they seemed to think we could use it to impress the girls when I was in high school. I still wonder how many of my friends ever actually bothered waltzing with their girlfriends and then their wives. I took Sue a few times when we were dating, but she was pregnant with Greg when we got married, so the dancing kind of fell by the wayside after that. I'm surprised I still remember how."

"Well, you must have kept it up somewhere," Carol said, impressed. "You're not rusty at all."

He grinned. "Well, neither are you. Where'd you learn?"

"My father taught me, shortly before my sister's wedding. He said it just wouldn't be right for the bride's little sister to be a wallflower. And I did have quite a few dance partners at Mary and Roger's reception, so it didn't go in vain, but I never got much of a chance after that. Roy wasn't a dancer. Sometimes I'd…" She hesitated, peered uncertainly up at him and read the curiosity in his eyes.

"You'd what?" Mike prompted.

Carol smiled sheepishly. "I'd wait till the girls were napping or playing, and Roy was at work, and then I'd pretend to be dancing in the bedroom, just by myself. I figured it was the only way I'd ever get back on a dance floor. I'm glad we're out here tonight, though."

Mike smiled. "I enjoy dancing with you. You just take in the music and really get the most out of it. That was one thing Sue couldn't do. She talked a lot. I think she did it to distract me from the fact that she never really got the hang of the more formal dances like this. She liked the stuff she did in high school."

Carol chuckled. "I don't blame her, I guess…those old dances back then _were_ a lot of fun. But there's something so…elegant about this kind of dancing." She had wanted to say _romantic_, but she didn't know how Mike might take that particular observation.

"Elegant," Mike agreed quietly, "and intimate, too." He smiled and pulled Carol in a little closer to him, and she willingly went, feeling his warmth and catching the irresistible scent of his cologne and what she thought of as his own personal essence. He always smelled so darn good, she thought appreciatively.

By the time the party finally ended, they'd had at least half a dozen slow dances together and were feeling mellow, influenced by the mood of the moment. On the way to the car in the dark, Mike caught Carol's hand and folded his around it; she felt a thrill shoot through her entire body and hoped the spell would last just a little bit longer.

In the car, he hesitated a moment before starting the engine, hands resting on the wheel; then he turned to her and said, "I have to confess…it's been years and years since I did this, even with Sue. I…forgot what that sort of dancing does to me." He shifted in his seat, then rested a hand on Carol's shoulder and leaned toward her, placing a gentle kiss on her lips, his mouth on hers.

Then he drew back and said softly, "Carol, I love you."

Just like that—straight out and without embellishments. But Carol couldn't have been more ecstatic. She stared at him with wide-eyed joy. "Oh, Mike!" she breathed.

He seemed to relax at her reaction and smiled broadly. "I take it that's okay with you."

She giggled softly. "Mike, it's more than okay. As a matter of fact…I love you too. I think I fell in love with you over the summer, when we were spending all that time together with the kids and had been going back and forth to each other's houses, and I saw what a wonderful man you are."

"I've probably been in love with you longer than I'm conscious of," Mike said slowly. "I was just afraid to admit it to myself for weeks, mostly on account of Sue, but I keep remembering what she told me not long before she died. She said that if I did ever fall in love again, I shouldn't hold back for her sake. And now I can see she was right. I thought if I took a chance, the worst that could happen was that I'd get the old 'let's be friends' speech. And what do you know, it paid off."

Carol studied him and decided that if he could be frank, so could she. "I don't think," she said deliberately, "that I could ever be 'just friends' with you. I'm too attracted to you for that. Always have been."

His eyes gleamed in the dim glow from a streetlight. "Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I feel the same way." He didn't give her a chance to respond to that, just leaned toward her again. This time she tipped in his direction as well, and when their lips met, he tilted his head to one side and gently coaxed her mouth open under his. Carol fell headlong; she lost herself in Mike's kiss, let it sweep her mind completely clean.

The kiss might have lasted indefinitely if there hadn't been a sudden rapping on the roof of the car that startled them apart. Mike muttered something exasperated-sounding beneath his breath and rolled his window down; there was his work colleague, grinning at them. "Well, Mike old buddy, looks like your evening's going better than you planned." Even Carol saw the dirty look Mike gave him, and giggled as Steve laughed. "Come on, Mike, Maria and I were hoping something like this'd happen. You've been alone too long. It's about time you found a good woman." He stuck his head almost through the window and grinned at Carol. "Don't let him get away, Carol, huh? He needs you."

Carol grinned back. "No more than I need him," she said candidly. Steve chuckled, wished them good night and strolled away to join his wife.

Mike turned to her then and stared at her. "Did I hear that right? You need me?"

"You sure did," Carol said, her tone growing soft and wistful. "In just about every way there is. Mike…where can we go, to be together? Just the two of us? My parents' place is obviously out of the question, and I don't think your house would be ideal either…"

Mike drummed his fingers on the seat for a moment, then smiled. "I think I've got the answer," he said. "Not necessarily tonight, but…well, let me check around a bit, and make a few plans, and then I'll let you know what I've got in mind. But for right now…" Once more he kissed her, this time letting out all the pent-up passion he must have been feeling, and Carol responded in kind, drowning in his kiss, wondering if she could stand to wait till whatever Mike had in mind came to fruition.


	22. Chapter 22

**THE CERTAINTY OF LOVE**

Carol woke up the following morning feeling oddly, but pleasantly, out of place for some reason, and when she opened her eyes and saw Mike sleeping peacefully beside her, she remembered why. A huge smile spread across her face. Waking up next to him was as sweet as she'd daydreamed it would be. She rolled over and snuggled up beside him, enjoying the feeling of relaxing beside a special man for the first time since Roy had walked out on her and the girls.

She was so glad she'd agreed to this. How could she have ever been nervous? Mike was gentle and caring, making sure she received as much pleasure as he did, if not more. He'd never seemed to tire of reminding her that he loved her. It was a balm to her soul after Roy and Tom; she had wondered if she could ever be truly attractive to a man again, when Roy had expected her to give him a houseful of sons and Tom had wanted to turn her into an oversized leprechaun. Mike just wanted her to be herself, and accepted her exactly as she was, as Carol Ann Tyler Martin.

"Whatcha thinking?" Mike murmured suddenly in a drowsy, playful voice.

"I'm thinking how lucky I am to be here with you right now," Carol said softly, smiling at him when he opened his eyes. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world."

He grinned, cuddled her closer and kissed her. "I feel the same way. Well, good morning to you, how'd you sleep?"

"Like a log," Carol said, basking in his warmth. "It really is a lovely place up here. It almost makes you want to build a house here."

Mike laughed quietly. "I think we'd be taking it for granted within a month if we did that," he said, "and this place is too pretty and too special for that. Who knows, someday maybe we'll even bring the kids up here." He grinned at her stunned expression. "Yeah, sure, why not? All six of 'em!"

She laughed. "I wonder if that'd work out. The girls are skiers…especially Marcia, she just loves it. We haven't been able to go very much—the few times we did, Roy always insisted on sitting in the ski lodge, drinking and reading murder mysteries and car-repair manuals, while the girls and I hit the slopes."

"Roy was a moron," said Mike unexpectedly, and she burst out laughing. Grinning, he propped himself up on one elbow. "I'm serious, he really was. What kind of idiot would turn aside three terrific little girls and a beautiful lady like you just because he didn't get a bunch of boys? Hey, believe me, Sue would've been envious of you. She loved our boys, sure, but she admitted to feeling outnumbered sometimes. If she hadn't gotten sick, we'd probably have tried for a girl after Bobby came along."

"Roy would have loved Sue," Carol remarked with a faint smile. "Funny, isn't it, how things go sometimes. But…" She sat up, determined to get off this dampening topic. "Why don't we concentrate on happier things? Like breakfast, for instance?"

"Capital suggestion," Mike agreed expansively, swinging out of bed. "If you'll let me grab the bathroom real quick, I'll be out in a flash and you'll hardly know I was gone."

They spent the day exploring the lake, swimming in the heated pool, and then taking a sauna—a real, authentic Finnish-style one that left Carol gasping but exhilarated. "What an experience! It makes you want to book a flight to Helsinki right this minute."

Mike grinned. "That'll have to wait awhile, I think. Though it's a great idea." He took her hand. "Right now, I'm hungry, how about you?"

They had another delicious dinner and then spent another wonderful night together; the next day they took a final swim before packing up to head for home. Carol kept glancing wistfully into the rearview mirrors as Mike drove down the entrance drive to the hotel. "This was the loveliest weekend I've had in so long I can't even remember," she murmured dreamily.

"It _was_ a really great weekend, wasn't it?" Mike agreed, reaching over and squeezing her hand. "I didn't think that'd ever happen again, but I'm glad to know I was wrong."

Something about that weekend changed Carol somehow. At least, that was the impression she got; her parents commented on her newly relaxed demeanor, the girls said she looked truly happy, and her friend Joanne next door pegged her. "You're really in love with that guy, Carol, aren't you?"

"I'm crazy about him," Carol said readily, nodding. "I don't think I've been this happy in years."

"I can tell," said Joanne. "It shows, Carol, it just radiates right out of you. Love does funny things, doesn't it? I just hope you don't wind up acting like a goofy teenager."

Carol laughed. "I feel like one, but I think I got most of the shenanigans out of my system after my experience with the girls' father. I've got my eyes wide open, and they're going to stay that way—but I refuse to stop believing in possibilities. I still think happy endings are a perfectly reasonable expectation. It's the fairy tales I've put away."

Jack and Pauline were delighted for her. "Sounds like a great guy, and you deserve one after what you went through," Jack said. "Hang onto him, sis, whatever you do."

Even Mary seemed to have come around. "All of it on his dime, just to impress you?" she asked, amazed. "Boy, Carol, I guess I was really wrong about this one. Seems like a real family man, but a romantic one too. So hey, do you think you'd like to have him around all the time?"

"Don't start, Mary," Carol warned good-naturedly. "He hasn't asked me yet."

"If he went so far as to take you to a resort like that one, he's gotta be serious," her sister said knowingly, "and that's not the action of a guy who's still mourning his dead wife. Heck, even his boys like you, don't they? How can you complain? You've got it made! Just sit back and wait for the proposal."

Carol thought about her sister's words for a long time after that. She and Mike continued to date, although there were no plans in the works for a wonderful getaway weekend like the one they'd just had. But Carol didn't mind so much; Mike was as loving and attentive as ever, maybe actually more so now that they'd had a chance to be alone together and acted on it. He gave her the most knee-melting kisses at the end of every date and always told her he loved her; and Carol blossomed under his attention, falling more and more in love with Mike Brady and never missing an opportunity to say it or show it.

But time passed and it seemed that was all there was. Even though one day near Christmas, Mike took an unexpected day off on a day when Alice was also off, visiting her sister, and the boys were at school, bringing her to his own house just so they could capture the same magic they'd created at the lake resort, their relationship seemed to have reached a sort of plateau. Carol didn't want to push the issue; she was afraid of driving Mike away somehow.

But in the end, she had to ask her mother. "Mom…do you have some time to talk?"

Martha smiled. "I've got all the time you need, dear. Is something wrong?"

Carol, too worried to beat around the bush, asked her point-blank, "Is it wrong for me to expect something more from my relationship with Mike?"

"More, as in what?" Martha queried.

Carol bit her lip, already feeling like a heel for putting it the way she had. "Something permanent, I guess."

"Oh." Martha turned to really look at her then, drawing out the word a bit with realization. "I knew you were in love with him, dear, but I didn't know it had gone that far."

"It has," Carol admitted. "At least, it has for me. I've come to understand in the last few weeks that this is the guy I should have held out for when I settled for Roy. Mike Brady is everything I could have ever dreamed of in a man. I'm just wondering…maybe _I'm_ not quite up to snuff with _him."_

Martha chuckled. "You've known him close to a year, but that doesn't mean he's ready to take such a big step. Remember, Carol, his marriage was very different from yours. He was very happy with his wife, he never made any secret of that. It takes a long time to get over the death of a beloved spouse, and while he might be honestly in love with you, he might still have some unresolved feelings about Sue."

"Do you think so?" Carol asked uncertainly.

"It's entirely possible," Martha said, nodding. "A lot of men take much longer than that to get over a dead wife. For him it's been, what, three years since she passed? I know the two of you are getting along like gangbusters, but you're still in that dating stage, when all's said and done. You're more open to the idea of making it permanent and binding because you aren't grieving for Roy the way he must have grieved for Sue. Let Mike set the pace, and in the meantime, stop worrying so much."

"I can't help worrying. It's what I do," Carol said helplessly.

Martha laughed. "I know, you've always been the family worrier. Well, try to stop, all right? Think of the luck you're having. You've found this wonderful man who dotes on you, and his kids like you, and you're in love with him. Accept that and be happy for it, and don't go around looking a gift horse in the mouth."

"You're right, Mom, you're right," Carol said and cleared her throat with resolve. "I guess I've been acting pretty selfish. Yep, the next move is definitely up to Mike."


	23. Chapter 23

**CAROL'S HAPPY ENDING**

"I've never seen this neighborhood before," Carol remarked as Mike negotiated the winding streets. "It looks nice."

"I thought so myself," Mike remarked lightly, pulling up to a stop sign. Carol stared oddly at him. He'd been acting like that ever since he picked her up just after she'd finished lunch with her parents and the girls. His mood was…whimsical, that was the word she wanted. Usually he wasn't like this. There was something up his sleeve, she knew, but no amount of badgering had gotten him to reveal whatever secret he was hiding. She had tried to keep a grip on her patience, but she'd never been long on that virtue and she was getting very antsy now.

"Come on, Mike," she tried one more time, "what's going on?"

"You'll see," was all he would say, and she groaned with frustration and collapsed back in her seat. He chuckled and made a left turn onto a street that led into a T intersection; across from the stop sign there, she could see a house under construction.

"A brand-new house in the middle of all these older ones?" she wondered aloud.

She caught Mike's sharp glance at her. "Yup," he said. And to her sheer surprise, once he went through the stop sign, he pulled into the driveway of that very house.

"Okay, I've had enough. What gives? What are we doing here, Mike?" Carol demanded.

Mike smiled and turned in his seat to face her. "This place is the house I always wanted to build for myself and my family. Three big bedrooms, a huge kitchen and living room, a family room, a nice backyard, a carport, and the den I've wanted for ages. There's a space for Alice, her own bedroom and bathroom and a service porch where she can do laundry and whatever else needs doing."

"So this is yours, then," Carol said in surprise, taking in the structure. The outside had nearly been completed, and she wondered what the interior looked like.

"Well, you're half right," Mike said, making her crank back around to stare at him in confusion. He grinned at her and offered, "Want the grand tour? The inside's pretty rough, but you'll get a good idea of what it'll look like."

"Sure," Carol agreed readily, still trying to puzzle out that weird comment he'd made a moment ago. But she set it aside for now; she really did want to see the inside of this showplace. She truly wished she could afford to get someplace like this for her daughters; Mike's boys were lucky, she thought enviously.

Her envy extended to Alice when she saw the large, spacious kitchen. The counters and cabinets had been installed but not yet painted; the only fully complete part of the room was the brick alcove that housed the oven. "This is beautiful," she said, gazing around the room and thinking how pretty it was probably going to be when it was all done.

He took her through the entire house, and she gasped at sight of the wonderful fieldstone fireplace in the living room and the airy, open flight of steps leading up to the second floor. The master suite was another surprise. "Good heavens, I've never been so jealous in all my life," she said laughingly.

Mike paused near the door and watched her while she checked out the closets, the vanity alcove, the luxurious en-suite bathroom. Finally he said, "There's no reason in the world for you to be jealous, you know."

Crossing the bedroom toward him, she stopped right in the middle. "Why not?"

He didn't answer right away; he came slowly into the room, cleared his throat, shoved a hand into the pocket of his jacket, glanced out the window toward the street. Then he looked directly into her eyes and took a deep breath, at the same time sinking down on one knee. Carol gasped.

"I'm building this house not just for me and my boys, but for you and your girls, too," Mike informed her solemnly. "Carol, will you marry me?"

Her throat closed up and she was afraid for a few seconds that she was going to burst into sobs; then she managed to pull in another breath, and her tears were supplanted instantly by an explosion of joy. "Oh, Mike, yes, yes, yes!" she cried.

He sprang back to his feet and hugged her hard, both of them laughing softly. Carol couldn't believe her incredible fortune. After all she'd been through, and now to have found this man—who had just asked her to spend the rest of her life with him! She clung to him, so happy she couldn't speak.

"Here, honey," he said, and drew back enough to withdraw his hand from his jacket pocket. In his fist he clutched a small ring box, which he popped open and handed to her. Still speechless, Carol reached in with a shaking hand and slowly, reverently, lifted out the sparkling diamond ring nestled inside.

Mike took it from her and slid it onto her finger. "I thought when Sue died that I could never be happy again," he said softly, "but you proved me wrong. You've made me the happiest, and the luckiest, man in California. When we get married, Carol, I want to adopt Marcia, Jan and Cindy—give them my surname and make them my daughters, in every way possible. Do you think they'd like that?"

Carol giggled deliriously. Miracle enough that he wanted her for all their days; that he also wanted her girls was nothing short of incredible. "Oh, Mike, honey…I don't know what to say, I'm so overwhelmed."

"Just say you're happy," he urged, grinning.

"I _am_ happy! I can't believe how happy I am! I'll ask the girls about the adoption, but I think they'll be thrilled. Especially Cindy—she's never really had a father, and I know she and her sisters all love you already, almost as much as I do. Oh, and I do love you, Mike, I love you so much."

"I love you too, Carol," he said, holding her close. "I love all of you. You know…" He studied her with another grin. "Wait till our parents hear about this. They're probably going to think we're crazy."

"I don't care," Carol said, feeling as if she could float away. "This has to be the happiest day of my life. When…when can we get married?"

Mike considered a moment. "Well, the house should be done by summer and ready for us to move into once the kids get out of school. That way they won't have any interruptions in their studies, and they should be able to settle into their new schools without too much trouble. And they can have a chance to get used to the new neighborhood and make some friends around the area, and get settled into their new bedrooms, and establish a good routine by the time school starts up again. So how about we schedule the wedding for the last weekend in May, just before school lets out?"

"That gives us only three months," Carol exclaimed, her mind racing, "but I think we can do it. There's no reason we can't keep it small. My parents' backyard is huge, we can have the wedding there, and we'll just have our extended families and maybe a few close friends. And I think the boys should be your attendants and the girls my bridesmaids, what do you think?"

"Sounds great, honey," Mike said cheerfully, kissing her. "I'll let you and your mother plan out the whole thing. But don't be surprised if my mother wants to get in on it too."

Carol giggled. "She'll be welcome. We can use all the ideas and help we can get. Oh, Mike, honey…" She hugged him hard, basking in his snug embrace, and then melted into his kiss.

‡ ‡ ‡

"Mike proposed?" exclaimed Marcia, saucer-eyed. "Wow, Mom, that's great!"

"Yeah, it'll be fun to have a real daddy around!" Jan agreed excitedly.

"What's it like to have a daddy?" Cindy asked.

"Wonderful, if it's the right kind of daddy, sweetheart," Carol assured her. "And Mike wants to be your daddy in every way he can. He'd like to adopt you three girls when we're married, so that we'll all be a big family unit, together."

Marcia and Jan looked at each other in amazement. "Really?" Jan asked.

"He wants us, even though we're just girls?" Marcia put in.

"You're not 'just' girls—you're special," Carol said firmly. "Mike will love you girls every bit as much as he loves his boys. He already does, or else he wouldn't have said he wants to adopt you—right?"

"I guess you're right," Marcia agreed, then grinned. "Imagine having a dad who's glad I'm a girl."

"Yeah," Jan marveled, her freckled face alight.

Cindy had clearly been thinking very hard. "Y'know what?" she blurted suddenly. "That means my name would be Cindy Brady!"

Carol laughed and hugged her close. "It sure does! Oh, girls, I'm so glad you like the idea. Mike will be thrilled."

"Do you think he'd mind if we called him Daddy?" Jan ventured shyly.

"I think he'd love it," Carol said and smoothed her hair. "It'd be just about the nicest wedding gift you could give him. Now, let's go tell Grandma and Grandpa, and then we've got a wedding to start planning."


	24. Chapter 24

**REFLECTIONS**

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" The question came, predictably enough, from Mary; they were carrying in furniture along with all the other adults and even most of the kids on both sides of the family. Earlier, both Mary and Carol had seen Greg eyeing Chrissy with embarrassed interest, but fortunately for Greg, nobody else had noticed. Pretty soon, as his cousin, she'd be off limits anyway, Mary had joked.

"I'm more than ready for this," Carol said firmly, which seemed to satisfy Mary; but as she was wont to do, Mary had planted a seed in Carol's head. There were just so many changes: a new husband, three new sons, a new house, new schools for the kids. In fact, the kids even had new beds—a bunk set for Peter and Bobby, and twin beds for Greg and the girls. The boys' beds were in dark wood, Greg's with a headboard that could hold books and other things; the girls' beds had wooden frames painted white.

Carol had actually thought this must be harder on Mike in some ways than on her. He was leaving a home where he'd made a lot of very happy memories with the boys and Sue, and he'd spent a lot of money creating an entirely new haven where everybody would get a fresh new beginning. He'd admitted at one point to Carol that though he'd wanted to build this house for many years, he had also perceived that Carol, Marcia, Jan and Cindy would probably feel like intruders if they simply moved into the existing house with Mike and the boys. It was a lot more expensive and far more work starting entirely new, but it would seem less intrusive for the boys and less like being squatters on someone else's turf for the girls. Besides, the kids had had the opportunity to pick out the décor for their new rooms, which had helped smooth the transition for all six.

She was aware that Alice was going to have some adjusting to do as well. Carol had hit it off with Mike's housekeeper from the start, but things were going to be different now, after all. Alice had spent several years working in a kitchen that was entirely her domain, as the lone female among a family of males. Now there would be three girls who would most likely want to lend a hand in the cooking, for various reasons, and there would be Carol, pitching in at every meal. Carol had grown used to sharing her mother's kitchen, so her own adjustment wouldn't be too bad.

But Alice was happy about it. "It'll cut my cooking work in half," she'd begun, then frowned. "No, wait a minute. I'd have twice as much cooking to do with the girls joining the family." She'd thought a minute, then shrugged and said cheerfully, "I guess they cancel each other out. Net result, no extra work, right?"

Carol had thought about telling her she shouldn't count on that, but then again, Alice was about the most efficient person she'd ever met. Working together, neither should have much more work than before, if any. Carol and Mike had laid down a few new rules to their respective kids, and their assistance should be a help as well.

So when evening fell and Carol and Mike took another tour through their still-disordered house, with children's voices rising and falling outside, she was feeling a little mixed-up. Of course she was looking forward to marrying Mike—she'd be crazy to back out now. He was probably the best thing that had ever happened to her. But considering how everything seemed to be brand-new in their lives now, it all seemed pretty overwhelming, and she needed a chance to catch her breath and get her bearings.

"It's the end of an era in our lives," she remarked absently, standing at their bedroom window gazing into the gathering darkness of evening.

"The end of an era?" Mike repeated. She nodded without looking back, and a moment or two later she felt him slip his arms around her from behind.

"All these changes…it's going to be awhile before we've gotten a real routine established," she said.

"But just imagine the fun we'll have doing it," he said. "Maybe it's the end of one era, but it's also the beginning of another. From tomorrow on, we'll be Mike and Carol Brady, parents of six, three sons and three daughters."

"That's a bunch," Carol said jokingly.

"Precisely," agreed Mike, sounding excited. "The Brady bunch, that's us." She let out a laugh, turned in his arms and kissed him, delighting in his response. It was going to be all right after all, and she could hardly wait to get started.

**THE END

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A/N:**_ Thanks to all my reviewers: PDXWiz, Harry 2, Woemcat, hartyvampire, Sam Waterston Fan, Alex B. Goode, and Shelleymh. I've had a lot of fun writing both Mike's and Carol's stories, and it's great to know that you've all enjoyed them so much. I'll be working on a couple of other projects for a while, but eventually I do plan to post Alice's story, so keep your eye out for it!_


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